Ghost in the Machine
by Aurora Nova
Summary: An alert host, an ex-girlfriend, and glitches in Ziggy's programming. Can Sam find a way to save a woman's life and solve a one hundred year old mystery at the same time?
1. Chapter 1

**Ghost in the Machine**

_A "Quantum Leap" fan fiction by aurora*nova_

_**(Disclaimer: the characters of Sam Beckett, Al, and others in the canon universe of **_**"Quantum Leap"**_** are the creations of Donald Bellisario. I do not own these characters or concepts nor do I claim them. All other characters and concepts are from my own imagination, and bear no resemblance to anyone living, dead or otherwise. "We've Got Tonight" written by Bob Seger; "I'm Afraid This Must Be Love" written by Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy.)**_

**August 10, 2007**

**Chapter 1**

The feeling of having my molecules coalesce back into a solid state is one that always leaves me a bit disoriented. And never knowing exactly who, or where, or when I leap into always leaves me feeling more than a bit confused.

"Grudge? Mark? Dude, it's your turn." I looked to my left at the thirty-something man sitting next to me. He was sandy-haired, rather on the large side, with a trim beard and a face full of laugh lines. On the table in front of us was a gridded map with little miniature figures arranged on it. The man had a cardboard screen printed with fantasy scenes on its face, and around the table were four other people with books, papers and polyhedral dice in front of them. This seemed oddly familiar to me.

"Give him a minute, Joe," said the only female at the table. "One wrong move and we're all toast." She looked to be in her late thirties-maybe no more than forty-attractive and in good shape. Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses and her head was crowned with a cap of brown hair that had soft reddish highlights in it, as well as more than a few strands of silver. Around her neck she wore a moonstone pendant in a tantalizingly familiar configuration: a solid circle flanked by two opposing crescents. I couldn't remember where I'd seen the symbol before.

She grinned briefly at me before returning her gaze to the papers in front of her. "Of course, if you kick over, I _won't_ be able to bring you back. A witch doesn't get those kinds of spells." A witch! _That_ was it! Her pendant was a pagan triple-moon symbol. I wondered briefly if she wore it for the game, or because she followed that faith.

"Ah..." I looked carefully at the map. I remembered this game! I'd played hours of it with my buddies in college. Stalling for time I asked, "Which one is me again?"

"This one," the woman said, pointing to a small figure that was obviously an overly-muscled fighter. I shuffled through the papers in front of me and quickly learned I was playing a barbarian named Grudge. The character sheet listed all the weapons and equipment my character possessed. And it wasn't much.

"What's that in front of me?" I asked, nodding at the large figure on the grid map.

The game master, Joe, looked confused. "I already described it to you."

One of the men across the table spoke up. "_We_ know it's an ogre, Mark, but our characters don't know. They've never seen one before."

"Yes, we did, Leo," countered the woman. "Back in the dwarven caverns, remember?"

"Yeah, but Mark wasn't with us then," said Leo. Okay, so I was a relative newcomer to this group, but I knew the game, and that made me feel a bit more secure. At least I could fake things through until I figured out who I was, and what I was there to do. And where was Al? My holographic counterpart was supposed to zero in on my whereabouts and tell me why I had leaped into this person's life.

"So are you forfeiting your turn, Mark?" demanded Joe.

"Um, no, I'll...uh..." I looked quickly at the character sheet again to verify what type of weapon I had. "I'll slash at him with my battleaxe." A chorus of groans went around the table, and Joe started in surprise. Leo began laughing uproariously, and the woman sighed and shook her head, muttering, "I don't believe it!" Still, she was grinning.

"Was that the wrong thing to do?" I asked, confused. Leo guffawed all the harder.

"Too late now," Joe said, laughing. "Roll the dice to hit, then."

"You're going to let him attack the _emissary_?" the guy on the end complained, incredulous.

"That's why I love Grudge," Leo chuckled. "You never know what he's going to do!" 

It _had_ been the wrong decision. Very quickly I learned the ogre was a representative bargaining for a peace treaty which our characters were supposed to negotiate. Instead, I sparked off a vicious battle as the ogre's companions came to his aid. So much for the peace treaty! "Ohhhhhhh boy…" I groaned.

As I continued the sham of pretending to be Mark, I took the opportunity to look at each of the people around the table. Any one of them could be the person I was here to help. From the good-natured, friendly bantering that flew back and forth, it was easy to see they'd known each other a long time. If Project Quantum Leap hadn't consumed my every waking moment, I might have become just like them, going about a normal life, using the game as a social outlet.

"Your name is Mark Simmons," said Al's voice from behind me, and I restrained myself from jumping out of my skin. "No...don't respond, Sam. I'll give you as much information as I've got until we can talk privately. It's August 10th, 2007. The guy sitting to your left is Joe Sanderson, your host; this is his house. Across from you is Leo Notolini-huh, fellow Italian! _Buona sera, connazionale! _The guy sitting to his left is Stan Wexworth, and next to him on the end is Eddie Rivera. You work with Joe and Leo at the same place in downtown Chicago-ohhh, Chicago! What a great town! I once knew a girl there who worked at the Ambassador East Hotel as a waitress in the Pump Room. And boy, could she _pump!_"

Ordinarily I didn't mind when Al would tell me who I was supposed to know, but he tended to get side-tracked easily down his sordid little Memory Lane. I've always had a photographic memory, which helped a great deal in remembering names and faces on the barest of introductions. And if my brain didn't get Swiss-cheesed each time I leaped, that statement would sound a whole lot more impressive than it is.

Game play continued around the table as I nodded my head deliberately at the woman sitting next to me while making it look like I was trying to adjust my neck. Al hesitated.

"She's the reason you're here, Sam. Her name is Heather Connelly, a retired factory-worker. She's the same age as you, forty-nine-" Al broke off. "Forty-nine? _Whoa!_ She's one hot mama-!" He leered at her, and I cleared my throat, innocently enough for those around me, but Al took it for the warning it was meant to be. "Ah, she was widowed a little over a year ago. You used to date her back in college but dumped her for the woman you ended up marrying." Al paused a moment and took another long, appreciative look at the woman to my right. "What were you _thinking?_ Oh, and you're widowed, too. You lost your wife about the same time Heather lost her husband."

It really irritated me when Al dragged out the information. I wished he'd just get to the point, and I cleared my throat again, quietly. Al let out a heavy sigh and hit the handset, which squealed in protest. "Ziggy says it's ninety-five percent probable that she gets killed tomorrow while working on a house she's restoring."

I couldn't help myself. I blurted out, "She dies?"

Heather looked at her character sheet and made a few quick hash marks. "No, not yet. I'm down to one last hit point but I'm still alive." She did a double-take past my shoulder, then took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, murmuring something under her breath about needing new ones. I wondered what that was about.

"So what are you going to do, Selene?" Joe asked her. "It's your turn."

"I'm going to pull back thirty feet and cast a 'cure' spell on myself!" Heather reached out toward her figure and moved it back, then picked up her dice. "_Please_ let me roll well!" she grinned, looking upward.

"I've never understood this game," Al drawled, puffing on his cigar.

As she continued her turn I thought about what Al had said about Mark having known Heather in the past. Did she know that I...that _he_...was the person sitting next to her? Or had enough time gone by that she had forgotten the past? I needed to find a place to talk to Al.

"Earth to Grudge," came Joe's voice again. "You're up."

"I..uh...have to...you know..." I glanced toward Joe with raised eyebrows hoping he'd understand the unspoken question.

"Right around the corner, here, Mark." He gestured behind him towards an alcove. Al rolled his eyes and sighed, "Not the john, _again!_"

"That works out for me, too," said Joe, pushing himself back from the table. "I need a smoke. C'mon out when you're done, Mark." He looked at Heather. "You coming?"

"You know I don't smoke, Joe," she grimaced. "Besides, I want to call Mom and Dad and check in on Callie."

"How long is she staying with them?" he asked, on his way out the door.

"A month. They said I needed a break, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get one. I'm still working on the house."

"You're gonna be workin' on that house for a _long_ time, you know," he teased her, stepping out onto the patio.

Right…the house. I wanted to ask her more about it, but Al was already motioning me toward the bathroom door, and Heather was digging her cell phone out of her purse, so I retreated. Once inside I turned on the vent fan to help muffle the fact that I would sound as though I were talking to myself.

As I turned to face Al, I could see Mark Simmons clearly in the mirror. He was still a very handsome man, though obviously getting older. His blond hair had more than a fair share of gray in it, but overall he was still in good physical condition. He wore dark rimmed glasses, and the gray eyes behind them were surrounded by little laugh lines. A neat, trim moustache with more gray in it than blond perched above a mouth that had smiled a lot. I knew that I didn't know much about Mark yet, but I liked what I saw.

I was wearing what appeared to be a light blue work shirt with "ADVANCED MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES" embroidered above the left pocket, which had a few obligatory pens stuck in it. Dark blue slacks and comfortable dress shoes rounded everything off. _Mark must have come here straight from work,_ I thought.

I turned to face my holographic companion, who looked decidedly rumpled in a plaid bathrobe pulled over black silk pajama bottoms and a five o'clock shadow. It must be early morning, Al's time. "Alright Al, so what else does Ziggy say?" I demanded.

"Okay, well, your name is Mark Simmons; you're forty-nine years old and a systems analyst for an I.T. company. You're a computer geek."

"That doesn't sound too hard to fake," I commented drily, knowing I'd built the super-computer, Ziggy, which maintained Project Quantum Leap.

"Oh well, I don't think you'll have to worry about that," said Al, just as drily. "You're on vacation for the next two weeks. Hopefully you'll do what needs to be done and leap out of here before you have to do Mark's job for him. Uh...lessee...the date is..." he broke off and hit the handset, which squealed in protest, "...August 10th, 2007."

He was stalling. I knew it, and he knew I knew it. Whenever Al had too little information to give me, he tended to rehash what I already knew. "Okay, fine. What _else_ has Ziggy got?"

"You've got three kids, all grown and gone, one grandson, and you've been widowed-"

"Okay, okay, I've got all that," I cut him off crossly. "What about Heather?"

Al scratched his head. "Ziggy doesn't have quite as much information on her. Uh...you dated in college, but you broke it off when you met Lisa-that's your late wife-and you haven't had any contact with Heather until tonight, when she accepted your co-worker Joe's invitation to play this little fantasy game he's running. It seems she used to be a regular player until her husband died, then she stopped coming. You've been with the group for a couple months now, every Friday night." Al grinned smugly. "Apparently Mark didn't know it was her when he first walked in this evening. It's just dawned on him."

"Yeah, well, she doesn't seem to recognize me."

"Oh, she knows, Sam."

"How do you know that? Did you ask her?" I demanded.

"No, but I got eyes. She's been stealing glances at you since I walked in. And even if her last name has changed, yours hasn't. Trust me...she _knows_ it's him!"

"So what am I supposed to do here, Al? How does-how _did_ Heather die in the original timeline?"

"Ah..." he peered at the handset again. "She falls through the floor of the attic in this old house she's restoring. Apparently there were some weakened boards up there and she fell through down to the first floor."

"_First_ floor? How tall is this house?"

"Three floors plus the attic. Ziggy says that when she fell through to the third floor, the force of her weight, and a couple boxes that were up there, broke the floor of the third story and she fell a total of..." he squinted again at the handset, "...thirty feet. Suffered massive internal injuries and died before help could arrive." Al let out a sympathetic _whoosh_. "Not a nice way to go!"

"So I need to be there to keep her from falling through?" I asked, wondering how I was supposed to accomplish that.

"Or keep her from working on her house tomorrow. Although..." Al broke off and scowled at the handset.

"What?" I demanded. "What does Ziggy say about that?"

"Well, Ziggy's not very clear. She's sulking again."

"Sulking? What for?"

"She says something is messing with the data." He shook the handset vigorously and glared at it again. "Ziggy says it's now ninety-two percent probable that she dies tomorrow..." he squinted at it with a puzzled expression. "And seventy-one point nine percent possible that if you save her tomorrow, she dies anyway on Sunday!" Al tucked the handset into the pocket of the bathrobe in frustration. "Now she's not even talking to me!"

"Look, Al, I've got to have more to go on."

"And I'll get it for you, Sam, just as soon as I can. In the meantime, you'd better go out there and acknowledge to her that you recognize her before everyone else comes back in." Al pulled the handset out again and hit a button; the door to the Imaging Chamber _whooshed_ opened. "Oh, and..." he paused before stepping through and turned back to me.

"Yes?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Have fun stormin' the castle, Geek-Boy!" Al stepped through and the door closed behind him. I would have been irritated with him, except that he was the only person in the world I'd ever told that nickname to. And I couldn't help but grin at the movie reference. One more glance at Mark in the mirror, and I left the bathroom.

Heather was poring over her papers and books, but looked up as I came in. Either her telephone conversation had been very short, or hadn't taken place at all. The other guys were still outside talking and laughing, so I decided to take Al's advice for once.

"Hello, Heather," I said, as if meeting her for the first time. Technically, _I_ was, but she didn't know that.

She smiled, a bit sadly I thought. "Hello, Mark."

"I...uh..I didn't recognize you at first," I apologized for the absent Mark.

She nodded. "I know. I knew who _you_ were right away." After what Al had said, it didn't surprise me, but I had a strange sense that Mark was. I wasn't sure just where that sensation was coming from, though, so I ignored it.

"You did?" I asked.

"Mm-hmm," she nodded. "I didn't say anything, though, because I didn't want to embarrass you or make you feel uncomfortable." She kept her eyes down on her papers, avoiding mine. "No one here now knew us then. Except maybe Eddie, and he doesn't have a very good head for names or faces, so I doubt he'd remember."

"I would never be embarrassed to know you, Heather," I said, reassuringly.

She looked up then and a half-bitter smile quirked her mouth. "Really?" She gave a small laugh. "Because I would be embarrassed to know me. I remember what I was like then."

"You weren't that bad," I said, cautiously. Heather laughed, and it was clearly a self-deprecating sound, without any humor in it.

"Yeah I was. I was hopelessly naive and terminally clueless," she said.

Truthfully I told her, "I've never thought of you that way. In fact," I continued, "I was just going to say that I think you look terrific!"

A smile, a genuine one this time, lit up her face. "Thank you, Mark," she said softly. "The years have been very good to you, too." We sat in awkward silence for several minutes. Heather kept her eyes on her books and papers in front of her, and I tried to think of something to say. I knew it couldn't have been easy for Heather to meet up with a guy that broke up with her years ago. Of course, I wouldn't have remembered if I'd ever been in that kind of situation myself, but I could empathize with her. I wanted to broach the subject of her house, but at that point the others came in and the game continued for the next couple of hours.

During the rest of the evening, I watched as Heather interacted with the other men around the table. Though she appeared to have known some of them for quite some time, it was apparently a strictly platonic friendship on her part. Two of the men were single, yet Heather made no attempt at all to flirt with them or give them any indication she felt anything other than sisterly affection for them. She kept them at a virtual arm's length. With me-or rather, Mark-there was the cool reserve of strangers just meeting for the first time. She gave no sign to the others that we'd had a mutual past.

Since I could nothing but wait for Al to come up with more details about what I needed to do in order to leap out, I decided I might as well throw myself into the moment and enjoy the game. It wasn't a pretty battle, and we nearly lost our rogue, Leo's character, when he tried to back-stab one of the ogres who saw him coming and chucked a huge boulder at him. Simeon almost bled to death from crushing damage before our cleric could get to him. It was a lot of fun and there was a lot of laughter around the table.

At length, when it was getting close to midnight, Joe brought the campaign to a stopping point. "So, are you coming out to karaoke tomorrow night?" he asked me. I was momentarily caught off guard.

"Karaoke?" I repeated, dumbly.

"Yeah, remember I asked you last week about coming out to sing karaoke this Saturday night? You said you'd think about it."

Tomorrow night. And Heather was supposed to die tomorrow. "I don't know," I hedged. "I might be busy..."

"Well, okay. If you can make it, great. If not, there's always next Saturday. What about you, Heather?"

Heather looked up from packing away her gaming paraphernalia. "I don't know, Joe. I'm pretty busy right now with the house. And I haven't sung in public for quite a while."

"You sing karaoke?" I asked, interested. I've always felt it takes a certain amount of courage to get up and sing in front of people, whether you're a good singer or not.

"Well, I pretend to," she said dismissively.

"Oh, bullshit!" Stan exclaimed. "Heather has an awesome voice, Mark. Don't let her tell you otherwise."

"Let's just say I haven't been booed off the stage yet," she qualified with a smile.

"I'd like to hear you sing," I said. "Maybe you can put off working on your house?" If I could get her to delay the restoration work, she might avoid the circumstances that led to her death, and I'd leap out!

She shook her head. "I can't. Callie comes home in a month and I need to get the place habitable. She's hoping to have a brand new bedroom when she gets back."

"Callie?"

"My daughter. She's nine. She's spending some time with my parents right now, but coming home in a few weeks, so I really have to get some stuff done. I'm living out of a duffle bag and sleeping on a futon right now, and I'm getting too old to camp out." She flashed a grin. "Just kidding about the futon!" I really liked that grin! It lit up her whole face and made her eyes dance.

"Karen and I have plans already," Joe put in, regretfully. The others around the table also claimed prior engagements, but Heather just shrugged.

"Not a problem," Heather said, reassuringly. "I know it's short notice. I'll manage."

"I can help," I offered. If I couldn't get her to postpone the work, then I had to arrange somehow to be close by to prevent anything from happening.

"Oh, no, that's not necessary, Mark!" she said quickly. "You barely know me..." I could see the barriers being raised, and I couldn't let her do it.

"That's alright. I'm pretty handy with tools. I'd be happy to help."

Joe spoke up, "Dude, you have no idea what you're getting into."

"It's a one-hundred and thirty year old Victorian, Mark," Leo added.

"And it's been abandoned while in probate for the last two years," Eddie finished.

Heather nodded. "I bought it a couple months ago. I saw it listed on a home-improvement website, in danger of being demolished. The local historical society was hoping someone would buy it and restore it, since they didn't have the money. I got it fairly cheap, but it's going to need lots of work. I've already had workmen out to re-wire, re-plumb and tuck-point the masonry, but I still have a long way to go."

"What will you be doing tomorrow, then?" Joe asked.

"Stripping wallpaper and tearing up old carpeting," Heather replied. "Some idiot back in the seventies put shag carpet in most of the rooms upstairs, and it looks vile. I know there are hardwood floors underneath, though, and I need to see if they can be saved."

"Gosh, I'm sorry I'm missing that," Joe said, laughing. It was obvious he meant nothing of the sort. Heather pulled a face at him and drawled, "Beast!"

"I'm not afraid of getting a little dirty," I assured her. Like Joe said, I had no idea what I was getting into.

As I drove back to Mark's apartment, with the help of his driver's license and a GPS system in his car, I tried to figure out how I was going to keep Heather out of the attic. And even if I was successful, Ziggy had indicated she would die the next day despite my efforts. I thought about the data fluctuations, and the seriousness of that. If Ziggy couldn't give me accurate information that could help me prevent Heather's death, I might not be able to be at the right place at the right time.

My Swiss-cheesed brain doesn't always remember previous leaps, but it seemed to me I had had more successes than failures. In point of fact, memory lapses notwithstanding, I couldn't remember any leaps I'd made that _had_ failed. I wondered briefly what would happen to me if I _did_. Would I remain in that person's life, living out the rest of their days, or would I leap to the next life anyway? Would I even remember if I failed? I needed to talk to Al, but he hadn't reappeared since our bathroom discussion.

Mark's apartment was in a newly-built neighborhood on the outskirts of town, with many buildings still under construction. Small spindly trees were anchored into the clay earth by guide wires. In the glare of the streetlights I could see small bushes and floral borders struggling to survive in the thin layer of topsoil that hadn't been scraped off the land just before these complexes were built. As the son of an Indiana farmer, I scowled at the knowledge of what had happened to the three or four feet of rich, dark soil that had once been here, growing wheat, corn and soybeans. Developers were the same all over-clear the land, scrape it flat, build your buildings, put two or three inches of topsoil back and sell off the rest for profit. Maybe it was just good business, but I preferred being able to turn over furrows and see acre after acre of corn growing high in the fields.

As I turned the key in the lock, I heard the Imaging Chamber door sliding open, and Al appeared, clean-shaven and wearing a bright purple jacket with light blue stripes over a shirt of gold lamé and teal trousers. He practically glowed in the dark.

"Sam, I've got some good news!" he crowed. My mood lightened immediately. I ushered him inside and turned on the lights, locking the door behind me.

"Great, Al!" I said, eagerly. "What's up?"

"Ziggy has pin-pointed the data fluctuations, and it's not being caused by any programming glitches," he announced. I waited. Al stood there beaming as if he'd just delivered a brand-new baby.

"Well?" I encouraged. "What _is_ causing it?"

"Oh!" Al chewed on his cigar as he hit a few keys on the handset. "Ziggy says there's a-" he paused and peered at the display, his eyebrows disappearing into the wrinkles on his forehead. "Oh, no, _that_ can't be right!"

"_What__?_" I demanded. "_What_ can't be right?"

Al sighed, deflated. "She says there's a _ghost_ in the machine, if you can believe that!"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "A _ghost_ in the machine?" I repeated. "What kind of talk is _that_?"

"I don't think she means a real ghost, Sam," Al began, but a loud squeal from the handset made him pause. "Oh. She's says that's exactly what she means."

"Al, that's impossible," I insisted, falling into what Al liked to call my "lecture mode". "Ghosts don't exist. And besides, the term 'ghost in the machine' is a philosophical term used to describe the dual nature of mind and body. To computer programmers it means a hidden sequence string that causes an echo in the programming, preventing it from running properly, or causing two separate programs to run simultaneously."

"Sam we can't have Ziggy screwing up her own programming," Al said, alarmed. "If anything shuts her down-" Al choked off that thought, but I knew what he hadn't said. If Ziggy crashed, I'd be lost in time, and they'd be unable to help or retrieve me unless and until she could be brought back online.

"Have Gooshie run a diagnostic series and see if he can isolate the echo. And have him pay special attention to the prediction parameters in particular," I said. "If that's what's interfering with Ziggy's ability to crunch the numbers, the diagnostic should be able to reset that part of the programming without affecting the rest of her system."

"I'm on it, Pally-O," Al said, all business.

"And Al?" I stopped him, "find out all you can about this house of Heather's. Here's the address." I showed him the slip of paper Heather had given me, and he peered at it, punched the information into his handset and nodded. He disappeared for several moments but returned as I was getting ready to fall into bed.

"Gooshie's running the diagnostics now, Sam. He said it would take a few hours."

I nodded. "It usually does, Al. Were you able to pull up anything on the house?"

"Not yet," he admitted. "Ziggy's a bit sluggish at the moment. But I'll have something for you in the morning, I promise."

"Good enough," I yawned. "Now I just have to figure out how to keep Heather out of the attic tomorrow. Or actually, later today," I amended, looking at the clock by the bedside.

"Maybe if you distract her, Sam," Al suggested.

"Distract her?" I asked, puzzled. "How?"

Al leered. "Well, you could put the moves on her, and spend the day playin' house-"

"Al-" I began, warningly.

"-and she'd be too busy to think about the attic-"

"AL!"

"-and you could show her how you hammer-" He gestured emphatically.

"_AL!" _I practically shouted.

"Alright, Sam, you don't have to get upset about it!" He sounded offended.

I sighed in frustration. "I don't think coming on to Heather is the right thing to do. It seems to me that she took it really hard when they broke up years ago. I don't want to hurt her again."

"Well you'd better think of something before tomorrow, Sam," Al cautioned me. "If Ziggy's having trouble with her Prob and Stat parameters, we may not be able to pin-point exactly when and where the accident happens. Even though Gooshie's troubleshooting, _she_ keeps insisting something's wrong. She's still claiming 'incorporeal interference'," he grimaced.

"How can anything 'interfere' with Ziggy, Al?" I demanded. "Ziggy's a high-security super-computer. No one outside of the Project has any access to her programming. Everything is on a private server and highly encrypted."

Al shrugged. "I don't know, Sam. Personally, I think Ziggy's got an inflated opinion of herself, with a good dose of paranoia thrown in. You should never have given her Barbra Streisand's ego."

"How can a computer be paranoid, Al?" I asked wearily, yawning and stretching. "That doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, well, I got a feeling nothing about this leap is going to make sense, Sam," Al growled. "Get some sleep, buddy boy. I'll wake you bright and early in the morning."

"Not too bright or too early," I mumbled, tumbling across the bed without bothering to undress.

"G'nite, pal," Al said softly, and the last thing I heard was the _whoosh_ of the Imaging Chamber door.

12


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Al woke me up long before I was really ready for it. I'd had less than five hours of sleep and felt groggy and rumpled. I stripped off and headed for the shower, making it quick. I dressed afterward in comfortable blue jeans, a beige t-shirt and athletic shoes. Al had opted for a more conservative silver lamé shirt under a plum-colored vest with black and silver pinstriped slacks-for Al, that _was_ conservative. I took a good look around Mark's apartment as Al filled me in on some of Mark's background as I got ready, rattling off significant names, dates and personal events that Mark would know. It was very strange, but as Al rambled on, I had the sense I knew all of it already.

On the walls and tables of his living area were photographs of Mark with his family. His now-deceased wife, a son and two daughters, and a more recent photo of the son with a very pretty young woman and a baby boy-Mark's grandson.

Exercise equipment filled one corner of the spare bedroom, and a state of the art computer system filled the other side, along with bookshelves full of I.T. manuals, periodicals and texts. Boxes stacked neatly in corners and closets told me Mark hadn't lived here that long. A change of scenery after his wife's death? Possibly. I hoped I'd be able to save Heather and leap out before Mark's family noticed anything "different" about him. In many of the lives I've taken over temporarily, I've had to become someone's brother, son, father, and even-on a few occasions-someone's girlfriend or mother. In every situation I've done the best I could not to disrupt their lives too much.

And I'd noticed something unsettling happening to me on this leap. Usually when I leap into someone, that person's soul or spirit or whatever you call it leaps into my body, back in the Waiting Room at the Project Center. Dr. Verbena Beeks, our staff psychiatrist, is standing by ready to sedate them so they're not really aware of what's happening to them. Sometimes, however, it's been necessary to gain additional information from them in order for me to fix whatever it was that went wrong, and when that happens, they "remember" the things I've done as though they've done it themselves. I don't really understand how that resolves itself, unless it's something that God does to protect the people whose lives I've changed for the better.

All I knew for certain this time around was that I could sense Mark's presence in my mind. There was some sort of mental link between us, and I knew he was aware of what was going on.

"Hurry up, Sam!" Al was urging me. "You've got to get to Heather's before she starts making like Norm Abrams!"

"Does Ziggy have any better idea _when_ the accident happens, Al?" I asked, wolfing down a breakfast sandwich I'd heated in the microwave and chasing it down with a glass of orange juice.

Al took out the technicolored handset and tapped out a sequence. "She's still not sure, Sam. A report we pulled up says Heather was alone in the house at the time, and it was a while before her body was discovered. A neighbor checked on her at about six-thirty Sunday evening, but by then she'd been dead for several hours."

"What about the house? Did you find anything out about it?" I queried.

"Plenty," Al smiled, happy to offer something I could use. "It was built in 1870 by a guy named - uh-" he peered at the handset. "Charles Arthur Henderson," Al confirmed. "He was a banker in Chicago-" he broke off with a whistle. "A pretty successful one, too, from the looks of it. And he moved his wife...uh, Alice...out to the sticks right before the Great Chicago Fire in October of 1871. Huh! Timing is everything!"

"Okay," I said, grabbing the car keys and heading out the door. "So who else owned the house between then and now?"

"Practically no one, Sam," Al replied as I settled myself behind the wheel. He made his holographic image appear as though he were sitting right next to me in the passenger seat. I knew the Imaging Chamber was basically a blank, empty room, so Al must have brought in a chair I couldn't see.

"Y'see, Henderson and his wife had only one kid, a daughter named Madeline. She was known as 'Miss Maddie' around here. She inherited everything when her old man and her mom kicked over in 1917, and she lived here alone the rest of her life. She died in 1980 at the age of a hundred, and her Will stated that her companion..." Al peered at the handset again, "...a Sophie something-or-other-" he broke off as I scowled, keeping my eyes on the road. "What? It's a Polish last name. I'm Italian. I don't know how to pronounce Polish names." He continued. "Anyway, Maddie's Will said that Sophie got to live here until _she_ died-which she did in 2005-and then everything went into probate to see if there were any other heirs."

"And were there?" I asked, already half-guessing the answer, based on the conversation last night around the gaming table.

Al shook his head. "There weren't, and when the probate was released, the house sat on the market because nobody wanted a white elephant. The place had been falling into ruin anyway because this Sophie lady didn't keep it up. Maddie's estate paid the utilities and property taxes, but didn't provide for maintenance."

"What did Sophie do for a living after Madeline Henderson died?"

"She was a housekeeper, Sam," said Al. "But according to Ziggy, when Heather bought the place it was a pig sty. Sophie'd been slipping into dementia in the last few years of her life and she'd become a hoarder. There's records to show Heather rented a dumpster for a week right after she bought the place."

"Well, that's more than I knew before, Al, thanks," I said. "Keep trying to find out what time Heather's supposed to...you know." For some reason, I couldn't make myself say it, but Al knew what I meant and nodded. "You got it, buddy," he assured me, before disappearing.

I followed the directions Heather had given me to the house. It was in an older section of town, closer to the downtown area. As I pulled up the drive I couldn't help but gape at the monstrosity before me. Neither Al nor Heather had exaggerated its condition. Even with the signs of recent restoration work, decrepit would have been the kindest thing to say about it. I got slowly out of the car and stared in disbelief at the ramshackle, paint-peeling behemoth before me. It towered three and a half stories above its corner lot, and stared blankly at me with empty windows. A slight movement caught my eye and I looked up at a second floor window in time to see a woman's figure retreat. The very next second, Heather stepped out gingerly onto the porch. She couldn't possibly have had time to get downstairs!

Deciding I must have imagined it, I walked up the uneven brick walkway to meet Heather. She was wearing khaki cargo jeans that fit her very well, and a white tank top, over which she wore a plaid man's shirt, knotted at the waist. A tool-belt hung at her hips, and the triple-moon pendant was still around her neck.

A hot, steaming cup was in her left hand. She must have seen my expression, because she chuckled, and the sound sent a strange thrill right through me. It was a very sexy chuckle.

"You can turn around right now and leave, Mark Simmons, and no one will call you a coward," she warned. "But if you break into the theme song from _'The Munsters'_, you do _not _get this cup of coffee!"

I couldn't help myself. I threw back my head and laughed. She had a wicked sense of humor, when it wasn't directed at herself. "Okay, I promise," I grinned. "But it _did_ cross my mind!"

She smiled back and came down the steps carefully and handed me the cup. "Just the way you like it, if I remember rightly," she said, casually. "Strong and black. Not as strong as Mom's, but then, anyone who drank my mother's coffee had to sign a waiver."

"It wasn't that bad," I said carefully, guessing that Mark had sampled her mother's coffee in the past.

Heather chuckled again, and again I felt that thrill. "You were the only man I ever knew who drank Mom's coffee undiluted." She paused a beat and said, "It impressed the hell out of me!"

I sipped the hot coffee, and it _was_ pretty strong. But that's how I liked my coffee, too. Mark and I had a few things in common, I could see.

"I really appreciate you coming out this morning to help, Mark," Heather said as she led me up the driveway along the side of the house. "You didn't have to, you know." Her voice was carefully casual; she seemed determined to keep things on a neutral level, but I knew I was feeling more and more attracted to her. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly made it all more complicated.

"I wanted to," I said. I couldn't tell her why, so instead I asked her, "What did you want to tackle first, the carpeting or the wallpaper?"

"Well…I need to get up into the attic," she said, and I almost did a spit-take.

A chill ran through me, despite the warmth of the morning and the hot coffee. "The attic? Why the attic? I thought we were going to get your daughter's room ready for her?"

"I know, but the roof doesn't look very good. There may be water damage on the underside. That means getting up into the attic to find out. The problem," she continued, "is that there's no way up there, and there should be. There's no pull-down ladder, no hatchway, no stairs, nothing!"

"Couldn't you just leave it for a contractor to figure that out?" I asked her. That would be so much easier, if I could just keep her out of the attic!

"I could, but the contractor will quote me based on what needs to be done. If the whole roof doesn't need to be replaced, if I can get by with just new shingles, I can save some money. And the only way I'll be able to tell for sure is to get up into the attic."

She sure was stubborn! "Well, if there's no obvious way, how are you going to do it?" I asked. "There's no way either of us is going to climb up to the top of a three-story building and walk on that roof. It'd be like climbing the Matterhorn! You'd either need hooves or one leg shorter than the other!" I didn't want to admit to her that I was terrified of heights.

Heather chuckled. "Just about," she agreed, "and I don't have a good head for heights anyway." I felt a measure of relief. "Okay, here's my thought: houses like this usually had some kind of servants' stairway running up the back of the house. It was a way for the housekeeping staff to move around without being seen by the guests. The servants' stairway was usually narrow, and was the furthest away from the main part of the house." She was moving around the side of the house to the back as she was speaking, and I followed her.

"Now, I've noticed there are very few windows on the back side of the house," she pointed out. "And if you use a little imagination, you can see that it's possible to hide a stairway there." I _could_ see it, and I was impressed with her detective skills, but I had to play Devil's Advocate.

"You could punch holes in your walls all day looking for your stairway," I argued. "You don't even know where to start."

"As a matter of fact, I do," she said, a bit smugly, and took a piece of paper out of her back pocket and opened it up. "A few days ago I took measurements all around the house on the first floor, inside and out. I drew it up on graph paper so I would be sure I didn't make a mistake. You can see _here_," she emphasized with her finger, "there's about a five foot wide displacement! _This_ is where the stairway has to be!"

I couldn't argue with the logic, but still I had to be the voice of reason. "The best thing to do then is call the contractor and have _them_ find the opening," I cautioned. "Show them your drawing and tell them where you think it might be. You can't just start bashing down walls. You could bring the house down!"

"It's not a load-bearing wall," she said brightly. "I've already checked." She walked around the corner of the house, picked up a large sledge hammer leaning against the clapboards and handed it back to me. "You said you were good with tools. How's your batting arm feeling today?"

"Ohhhh, boy!" I groaned. I was afraid of that! "Well, if you're bound and determined, at least let me find some work gloves." The last thing I needed was blisters. And if we _did_ find a way into the attic, at least I'd be there if anything happened.

"Oh! I think I left some out in the carriage house after I cleaned up the yard last weekend," she said. "I'll go get them." She jogged off toward a two-story outbuilding at the back of the property. When the house was new it would have been a stable for the horses and carriages used by the family. Today it was probably a garage, though I could see Heather's older sedan-which I'd noticed the night before-parked in the driveway.

As Heather ran across the back yard I watched her retreating form appreciatively, and began to feel a corresponding physical reaction. This wouldn't be easy! Heather was just too distracting!

A low whistle behind me made me whirl around in embarrassment and pique. Al was staring after Heather as well. "Sam, she's got two of the nicest-"

"Al...!" I said warningly.

"-Victorian globes I've ever seen!" he finished innocently, gesturing with his cigar toward the garden where two large glass globes rested on pillars at the end of the walkway. The silver lamé shirt he wore gleamed; it couldn't have been from the sun, I thought abstractly. Al was a hologram, so the gleam had to come from the lights in the Imaging Chamber.

"Al, we're not here to admire her...her _globes_!" I hissed. "What does Ziggy say?"

Al was still gazing off toward the carriage house, but gave himself a mental shake and punched at the handset. "Ah..Ziggy is still having trouble pin-pointing the time of death, Sam. She's still insisting there's something messing up her internal Prob & Stat program, and Gooshie's been pullin' out what little hair he has left, running tests all morning."

I frowned. "The diagnostic run should have clearing things up," I said.

"It didn't, Sam," Al replied sourly. "I mean, it took care of a few other little niggling things that were slowing Ziggy down, but the closest she can get to a T.O.D. is between eight-fifteen and eleven-thirty in the morning. I don't know what else we can do. There isn't anything wrong with Ziggy, but _she_ keeps insisting there is."

"Great, just what I need. A hypochondriacal computer!"

"Yeah, well, we've got another concern, too. I wasn't going to say anything, but-"

"But what? Tell me quick before Heather comes back," I said hurriedly.

"Why? She can't see or hear me." Al shrugged. "Anyway, Dr. Beeks says that Mark, the guy you leaped into, is resisting the sedative, and he's wide awake in the Waiting Room and asking questions."

"Dr. Beeks knows the Standard Operating Procedure for handling an alert host as well as you or me, Al." I looked at my holographic friend shrewdly. "There's something else you're not saying. What is it?"

Resignedly, Al said bluntly, "Mark is aware of what you're doing. He knows you're in his body."

I digested that. "That would explain some of the thoughts I've been having, Al. I've been remembering my past...I mean _Mark's_ past. Can't Verbena give him a stronger sedative?"

"She's tried Sam. He keeps shaking it off somehow. He's not being violent or anything, he's being cooperative. But he _knows_, Sam. He's alert when you're awake and he sleeps when you're sleeping. Dr. Beeks says it's almost as if he can 'see' through your eyes." Al let that sink in a bit before opening up the Imaging Chamber door. "I'll keep you posted, pal. I'll find out what's going on with Ziggy if I have to tear her apart and rebuild her myself."

I chuckled tiredly. "You couldn't do it, Al."

Al grinned and puffed his cigar. "No, but it would give me _enormous_ satisfaction!" He waved and left, just as Heather appeared in the doorway of the carriage house.

"Who was that, Mark?" she called, gloves in hand.

My stomach sank. "Who was who?" I bluffed, stalling for time.

She approached with a puzzled look on her face, scanning up and down the street. "The guy in the silver lamé shirt with the cigar." She handed me the gloves and I nearly dropped them numbly. She had seen Al!

"Ah...I don't know. Just some guy asking for directions," I lied. I hated to do that, but this was something I hadn't anticipated. Al's holographic image was specifically designed to match my neuron patterns exactly. Usually only I could see or hear him, but sometimes small children could, and nearly all animals. How was Heather able to see him? Could she hear him, too? That could be a problem!

She chuckled. "He should spend more money on a GPS system and less on the flashy wardrobe. I was getting a nasty glare off that shirt! You ready?" she asked, and I gratefully followed her into the house, glad she'd decided to drop the matter.

But I couldn't help being concerned. This leap wasn't going very well. Between the problems with Ziggy and the apparent connection that existed between Mark and me, this was just one more complication I didn't need. If Heather could see Al-maybe even hear him-then we really needed to be careful around her, and finding places to talk and exchange information was going to be problematic.

In addition, I couldn't risk forcing a relationship between her and Mark that maybe neither one wanted just because _I _found her attractive. I gave myself a mental shake as Heather led me up into the kitchen. I had to keep things casual, just as Heather was doing. As far as she knew, I was just a friend, someone she'd once known, who'd come over to help her out.

The kitchen of the old Henderson House had seen some modernization within the last couple of decades. The appliances, though older, were obviously not original to the house, though the cabinets may very well have been. The knotty pine wood used in their making had aged to a deep golden color, and blue-and-white Delft tiles lined the walls behind the counters. Except for a modern toaster-oven and coffee-maker, there wasn't very much else out in view except a flashlight, some duct tape and a partial roll of plastic sheeting. There were also two masks and two sets of protective eyewear.

An opening, which appeared to lead into the rest of the house, was draped with plastic sheeting, and the same material was taped to the horizontal surfaces in the kitchen.

"I know we'll be breaking through plaster and lathe," Heather said, taking the coffee cup from my hand and setting it in the sink under the plastic sheet. She handed me a pair of goggles and a respirator mask, and put on a set of her own. "So I put up a plastic sheet in the doorway over there. No sense getting plaster dust through the rest of the house." She pointed to the short wall just inside the mud room door. "I figured this would be the best place to try and break through."

"Why there?" I asked, fitting the goggles over my eyes. "Wouldn't it make more sense to put the doorway to the stairs here?" I pointed to the long wall that formed one side of the kitchen, perpendicular to the door. "I mean, if a maid was carrying a fully-laden breakfast tray or something, it would be awkward getting it around the corner between the back door and the stairs."

Heather thought for a moment. "You're right, Mark. It makes perfect sense! I'm ashamed I didn't think of it."

"No need to be ashamed," I said, smiling. "It's impressive how much you've figured out already. Stand back!"

I hefted the sledge hammer and gave a few practice swings. "Send one into the cheap seats!" Heather quipped, and I laughed. Then the real work began.

The wall seemed like it was made of granite. I swung that heavy sledge hammer repeatedly, chipping off more plaster and wooden lathe with each swing, but it was coming off only in bits and pieces. The day promised to be a warm one, and it wasn't long before I was sweating like crazy, the plaster dust caking to my arms like a fine mud.

Heather insisted on periodically taking her turn at the hammer to give me a break, and in spite of the fact that she was nearly fifty years old, she swung it more easily than I would have given her credit for. It was very interesting watching her fluid movements. At one point she stopped to remove the plaid shirt she was wearing and caught me staring at her. "Something wrong?" she asked, concerned.

"Just admiring the view," I said, and then inwardly cringed. I could have bitten my tongue out! Mark's personality had slipped through my guard. I had to be more careful!

Heather blushed! I wouldn't have believed a woman her age _could_ blush, but she did...bright red! She didn't say anything but swung the hammer more furiously. In a few minutes, though, we heard the crackling crunch that told us we'd broken through to the other side of the wall.

"Wow!" she exclaimed, a little too brightly. "That was a lot of work! Now I've either got a stairway on the other side, or a nice closet!" She was using humor again as a shield. How I knew that, I wasn't sure, but I was convinced it was a technique she used frequently to hide her feelings.

I picked up the flashlight sitting on the kitchen counter and handed it to her. "Take a peek," I said. "What can you see?" She took it, turned it on, and shined it through the hole she'd made, getting her face closer to the wall. There was a long silence.

"Well?" I demanded, curious. "Were we right? What do you see?"

"My god," she whispered. "It's full of stairs!"

The reference to _2001: A Space Odyssey_ was too much, and I burst out laughing again. Heather's eyes crinkled as she grinned at me behind her mask.

It took the better part of the next hour to open the hole wide enough for us to get through. I found a large plastic trash can and we filled it with debris and dragged it outside. It was a lot heavier than it looked, and we were both panting with the effort. Heather looked like she wanted to keep going, but I heard her stomach rumbled rather loudly and demanded we stop and get something to eat. She laughed and took pity on me.

My experience with eating establishments during my leaps has run the gamut from some of the finest restaurants in the biggest cities, to the lowest greasy-spoon dives in the most rural areas of the country. The place Heather chose was somewhere in-between. It wasn't a fast-food place, but rather a local diner that served surprisingly good food at a pleasantly affordable price. Not that Mark needed to worry too much about money, judging by what I'd seen in his wallet.

_Dina's Diner _looked like one of those cozy, Mom-and-Pop places that somehow never made it out of the 1950's. The black and white checkerboard floor tiles were scrupulously clean, the red naugahyde booths marched evenly beside the large picture windows just ten feet away from the chromed formica counter which, at this hour, was packed with customers. Behind the counter, a teen-aged girl in a pink shirt-dress and white apron waved to Heather and gestured to a booth mid-way down the aisle. Though we'd taken a few minutes back at Heather's to brush off the plaster dust, I could see she was a little self-conscious as people turned to look at us.

The teen-aged girl-Connie, by her name tag-came over to take our order. "Hey, there, Miz Connelly," she greeted Heather. "How's the work on your house coming?"

"Fine, Connie, just fine, thank you. This is Mr. Simmons, a—friend of mine," she explained, with just the barest hesitation, when she noticed Connie appraising me curiously. Heather went on to request a glass of water to drink and a menu, and I followed her suit. Heather made her choice quickly, which I liked. _She used to be so indecisive, _I thought. Then I realized the thought hadn't originated from me. I was more than a little unnerved, and tried to focus on the present.

I insisted on buying lunch, which Heather objected to, insisting in turn that she could pay her own way. I overrode her objections, though, and told her my manly pride was at stake, which caused her to laugh. I liked making her laugh. And while we waited for our food, something very odd happened. I began to _remember_ my past with Heather. In point of fact it was Mark's past I was remembering, and it shouldn't be happening at all, but I was recalling memories of the time he'd spent in her company, all those years ago.

Some of the memories were embarrassing, and I shifted a little uncomfortably. I felt ashamed at the way I'd broken off with her, repeatedly, only to get back together after a few weeks or so. No, not _me...__Mark._ And the last time was the worst of all. But Lisa was everything Heather hadn't been back then; vivacious, confident, beautiful and very sexy. Heather had always been attractive, but twenty years ago I wouldn't have called her stunningly beautiful. Where Lisa was vivacious, Heather was awkward. Where Lisa had been confident, Heather had been insecure. And where Lisa had been sexy, and all too willing to-_NO-_. I wasn't going to dwell on that! I shut down the memories. Not here, not now; this was neither the time nor the place to dwell on them, and I really felt like I was intruding into something that was none of my business.

Heather must have sensed my mood shift, because she gave me a piercing look. "Are you alright, Mark? You look tired all of a sudden. You're no spring chicken, you know." A teasing grin took the sting out of the words.

I decided a bit of honesty and remorse was in order, and didn't sense any objections from that second presence in my mind. "Heather," I began, "I want to apologize for the way I treated you, way back in college."

Heather stiffened immediately. "Mark, this isn't necessary-"

"I think it is," I cut her off. "I treated you pretty shabbily, and strung you along unnecessarily with the on-again, off-again relationship we had."

"You made the choice you felt was right for you at the time, Mark," she said, keeping her voice neutral. "It just didn't include me."

"Still," I insisted, "I should have told you it was over, instead of you finding out the way you did."

"Yes, you should have," she agreed, a bit tartly. "You owed me that much at least. A little dignity would have been nice."

I nodded glumly. "I know it doesn't help now," I continued, "but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Heather gave a resigned sigh. "Look, Mark," she said. "I've had about two decades to go over it in my mind, wondering if anything I could have said or done would have kept you with me. But the bottom line is this: _you didn't love me._ Not the way I loved you. All the signs were there, and everyone could see them but me."

I was perplexed. "Signs? What signs?"

"It hardly matters now," she said, dismissively.

"No, really," I heard myself say, "I'm curious to know." _I _wasn't, but it seemed Mark needed to know.

Heather paused and took a sip of water before speaking. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "Okay, for starters, you never gave me any of the little trinkety, knick-knacky sort of gifts that guys in love give their girlfriends. No little mementos, costume jewelry, stuffed animals from the county fair…I don't even have a photograph of you."

I digested that. "Next, you always broke up with me around special occasions, like Christmas, my birthday, _your_ birthday, Valentine's Day and so on. We'd be apart for a month or so, then get back together, only to break up again when the next special occasion came around. Any hint of a romantic day, and you were gone." Her voice was steady, but her eyes, only partially hidden behind the glasses, couldn't disguise the hurt she'd felt twenty years before. It was still a raw, open wound.

"Finally-and this was the big one-you never actually came out and said, 'I love you' to me. Not once in the whole time we were together." She gave a small, humorless chuckle that barely escaped sounding bitter. "At least I can be grateful you never lied to me," she said, smiling slightly to take the sting out of the statement. "That would have been far worse."

A strong sense of regret and shame overcame me, but this time I knew they weren't _my_ emotions. There wasn't much I could say, but I had to let Mark know my opinion. "I really was a bastard to you, Heather. I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted," she said graciously. "Now let's leave it in the past where it belongs, shall we?"

"Deal," I smiled, and reached across the table to shake hands with her. She rewarded me with a smile of her own.

"You know," she said, sobering again, "you've done so much today already. You can take off after lunch if you like. I can handle things now by myself. I'm sure you must have other stuff to do." I was being dismissed. She was putting up those barriers again, and it rankled.

"_No!"_ I forced myself to smile broader, to soften the impact of my outburst. "I'm really enjoying this, Heather."

"You're enjoying working your patooshka off, breaking down walls?" she said wryly, raising one eyebrow.

"I'm enjoying spending time with _you_, Heather," I said truthfully, and she blushed again. Mercifully, our food arrived at that point, and for several minutes we concentrated on our lunches. Soon, though I asked her about her plans for the house.

"I think I mentioned I bought it a couple months ago," she began, and I nodded. "The realtor told me it had been left unoccupied while it went through probate after the previous resident died." She chuckled wryly. "Unoccupied maybe, but not empty. There was a lot of junk there-in the house and in the yard. But I'd bought it lock, stock and barrel, so I knew going into it what I was getting myself into. Everything in and on the property was mine-my possession and my responsibility."

"Who held the mortgage when you bought it?" I asked.

"The bank, apparently, but in trust for the previous owner," she replied. Heather went on to tell me pretty much what Al had already been able to find out, regarding Henderson, his wife and daughter.

"Sounds like you've been doing some research," I smiled.

"Yeah, a bit. It's been difficult to get any information that's over a hundred years old, though."

"Couldn't you talk to the local historical society?" I asked.

"Oh, I have," she replied, sipping her glass of ice water. "They were able to tell me what I've just told you. And they gave me copies of the few old photos they had of Maddie Henderson and her parents, and the house when it was first built. You see, the Society is delighted that I'm restoring it. It's on the national registry of historic homes, so it couldn't be torn down without a lot of legal red tape, but it was in danger of falling down on its own."

"It still might," I said dourly, knowing what was to happen, if I couldn't prevent it. But I didn't want to upset her, and I was curious about one thing. "Isn't it kind of a big house for just you and Callie, though?" I asked. "Are you planning to turn it into a bed and breakfast type of place?"

"Oh, no!" she chuckled. "I'm _not_ a morning person. And besides, if I were self-employed like that, I'd never get another day off!" Her eyes took on a far-away look as she continued, "No, I guess I've always been something of a hopeless romantic. You should remember that." Mark did. "This house is perfect. It's the kind of house I've always wanted to live in. Not something jarringly modern and new. Something that has a little history to it."

"I understand," I said. And I really did. Apparently so did Mark; I sensed his approval. "So after Maddie's parents died, she lived here all alone?" I questioned.

"Oh, she wasn't alone," Heather contradicted. "From what the Historical Society has been able to tell me, Maddie took in orphaned children and raised them here. The last one went off on their own sometime in the mid-1950's. She was alone after that for a while, but very active in local charitable organizations until the early Seventies. For the last twenty-five years or so of her life, Maddie had a care-giver named Sophie, who was a young girl when she came to take care of Maddie. Sophie came from somewhere in Eastern Europe, but I'm not exactly sure where. From the reports of a couple of my neighbors who've lived here a long time, and who remember Maddie, they say the two women got along famously. They both loved dolls, of all things, and collected many of them."

"Why do you say, 'of all things'?"

Heather colored a bit. "Well...I collect dolls, too. Of course, they're all in storage at the moment, but I happen to like collecting them!" she declared, a bit defiantly. I chuckled and held my hands out in defense.

"I didn't say you couldn't like them!"

"Well, some people think I'm odd for having a doll collection at my age," she said, not quite assured.

I heard my voice speaking, but I didn't initiate the thought. "Being odd is more fun than you think, Heather!"

She blinked at me in surprised, then broke into peals of laughter. Half the restaurant turned to look at us. "Oh my god, Mark!" she gasped between giggles, "I remember you used to say that back in college!"

13


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

After lunch we slowly walked back up the street toward the house. Heather told me what I'd already learned from Al, about the disposition of the Henderson House after Maddie's death.

"She really was a foresighted woman," Heather said admiringly. "She'd left enough money in a special perpetual account for the property taxes to be paid out for the next fifty years, or Sophie's death, whichever came first. Maddie was quite a wealthy, if eccentric woman."

"Wealthy people often _are_ eccentric," I observed.

"I wouldn't know about that!" she commented. Which led me to wonder again if Heather was going to be able to maintain a home of that size. It would be a shame if she had to give up something she'd waited so long to have.

"So if you're not going to turn it into a business," I said as we approached, "what do you plan to do with it?"

"Live in it," she said, firmly. "And maybe at the holidays I can open it up for charity events, like a Victorian Christmas dinner, or something like that."

"I think that's a great idea," I said sincerely.

As Heather disappeared through the side door I glanced up again at the old house, and I clearly saw a figure in the second floor window. Only this time it was a man, not a woman, and he glared at me in anger before vanishing. It wasn't my imagination, I knew that much. There was someone or some_thing_ in that house that didn't want us there. Whether Heather was aware of it, I didn't know, but I resolved to stick close and say nothing about it for now.

Once inside, Heather wrapped a towel around the end of her broom and handed me the flashlight.

"It looks like an Indiana Jones movie in there," she grinned. "Layers upon layers of cobwebs. I'll brush them out; you can follow behind with the light."

"Oh, no," I said, reminded suddenly of just _why_ I was here. "_I'll_ go first with the broom. _You_ take the light!" She would have protested, but I firmly handed her the flashlight and took the broom.

"Steal _my_ broom, will you?" she grumbled good-naturedly. "You're lucky I don't turn you into a toad!"

As we made our way up the stairs, I tested each one carefully before putting my full weight on it. After a hundred years or so of being subjected to the extremes of heat and cold, of dust and neglect, and with the difficulties I'd had getting information about this leap, I wasn't taking any chances that Ziggy was wrong about _where_ Heather had fallen through. I insisted she step where I stepped, which was easy enough to see in the inch-thick layer of dust on the treads. Where the risers seemed loose, I helped pull her up, and the contact with her hand sent an electric shock through me. I toyed with the idea of making contact with more than just her hand-and firmly clamped down on that line of thinking. I wasn't sure just how much I was picking up from Mark, but I didn't need that kind of complication right now. I had to pay attention.

Something glinted in the light to one side a few steps ahead, and I stopped.

"Is something wrong?" Heather called up from behind me.

"No, just...shine your light over to the right a bit, and up," I requested. As she directed the beam I noticed a window framed in the outside wall of the staircase.

"Omigoddess…" Heather breathed. "A window! But there's nothing on the outside! I know…I've looked."

"Whoever covered it over made sure no one would ever guess there was a window there," I deduced. "And it looks to be stained glass, too."

"Who would do that? Any why?" I could hear the excitement in her voice. "Note to self: restore the windows on this side of the house!"

We continued up to a landing that doubled-back on itself. On this side we could clearly see a door.

"That leads into what I think was Maddie's bedroom," Heather said. "It's going to be Callie's. But there's no corresponding door in that room."

"It was covered over, too, then," I said. "Just like the window." I was beginning to sweat again. It was hot in this stairway, we were kicking up lots of dust, and there was very little air circulating. I could see Heather was feeling the effects, too. Trickles of perspiration were trailing in a most distracting way down her dust-covered neck.

"Okay, note to self," she muttered, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. "Re-open the doors and get some air flow through here!" We forged onward and upward to the next landing at the third floor. Again, Heather confirmed that the room on the other side-some kind of children's room or nursery-had no door on the other side of the wall. From this point on the staircase narrowed and continued up another flight, ending in a door. Another stained-glass window was framed in the outside wall.

"That's the east side of the house," Heather observed. "I'll bet those windows look beautiful when the sun shines through them in the morning!"

The door at the top of the stairs was locked, and Heather didn't have a key. "There are a couple of locked rooms in this house I don't have keys for. The realtor didn't have them, and she didn't know about _this_." She frowned, disappointed. "I suppose I'll have to call in a locksmith."

"Maybe not," I said, remembering an old western movie I'd seen-_how many years ago?_ "A lot of times these old houses used the same kind of lock on all the doors. Do you have any other keys for the other rooms?" _Why did I say that?_ I berated myself. _I'm supposed to keep her _out_ of the attic!_

"Yeah, I do!" she exclaimed, digging into her right front pocket and pulling out a medium-sized brass key. She handed it up to me and I fit it into the lock. I glanced at Heather and she grinned again and crossed her fingers. I turned the key.

It was _very_ stiff, protesting with creaks and groans, but it _did_ turn and click. I opened the door and cautiously stepped into the attic. Heather came up behind me and I moved just enough to let her see in, but not enter.

The attic was very dark and cramped-looking. The roof was barely six feet over our heads, so I would have to duck a little to avoid banging my head against the rafters. It pitched this way and that as the architecture rose and dipped around dormers, gables and turrets. As Heather flashed the light around, however, we could see that it wasn't empty. In fact, the attic was full of trunks, crates, boxes and larger drop-cloth covered shapes that I assumed to be furniture of some kind.

Heather gasped, and I couldn't help murmuring, "Whoa!" It was amazing that anyone could have gotten some of these things up here in the first place, let alone hide them away forever.

She slumped down on the top step, and I grabbed her, panicking, thinking, _This is it, Sam!_

But it wasn't; not yet anyway. Heather had simply been overwhelmed by our discovery, and her knees had buckled. "I'm okay! I'm alright!" she said irritably, pushing away my arms. I very reluctantly let her go. She seemed upset at showing any sign of weakness. Or maybe she just didn't want an ex-boyfriend touching her.

"Oh...my...Goddess!" she breathed. "Mark, do you think we can get some of it downstairs, to get a better look at it?" she asked me.

I groaned. "I was afraid you were going to ask that! Can't it wait until you get some workmen here? Some of those look _heavy!"_ I knew I was whining, but I was hot, sweaty and edgy. I knew this was a bad idea, even though a small part of me was just as excited as Heather.

She practically pouted. "I suppose...I mean, I need to look at the roof right now, but _c'mon_, Mark! This is like Christmas! I'd _love_ to take a peek in a couple of these trunks."

I peered at the closest one in the dim flash light. "That might be a problem, unless you have a key ring somewhere."

Her excitement evaporated and her face fell in disappointment. "No, I don't. Well, at least I can do what I came up here to do," she said, getting to her feet. "Let me through, please, Mark."

Uh-oh, this was not good. With all the clutter scattered around, I might not be able to reach her quickly enough if... "Uh...maybe it would be better if I did this for you," I said, reaching for the flashlight.

"What?" she demanded, a glint of anger in her eyes. "You think I don't know what to look for? I know water damage on wood when I see it, Mark Simmons!"

"That wasn't what I meant," I countered, exasperated. "I know you're smart, Heather, but-" 

"But what, Mark?" Heather shot back. "Don't think I'm ungrateful for your help today, because I really do appreciate it. But I'm not a silly child anymore! I'm a grown woman, and I can handle the challenges I'm given!"

Okay, so that last bit didn't seem to have anything to do with the current situation. Her earlier comment about being 'hopelessly naïve and terminally clueless', combined with the memories I'd been getting from Mark told me clearly that she wasn't as indifferent to his presence here as I'd thought. She must have assumed that Mark still wasn't taking her seriously.

"I don't think you're a silly child," I returned, feeling my own anger rising. Why was she being so damned stubborn?

"Then don't treat me like one!" she flared back. She grabbed the flashlight from me and marched into the attic, evading my grasp.

She stood for a moment, flashing the light around at the underside of the roof. "I don't see anything here," she said and moved a few steps further away. I moved in to close the distance between us. So far, nothing was happening. Was Ziggy wrong? She seldom was.

Carefully Heather moved further into the attic, and I followed nervously, but still the floor held. Heather carefully inspected every nook and cranny of the roof that her flashlight beam could reach and found no apparent water damage. We moved past the area where the trunks had been left and found several larger shapes covered in drop-cloths. I pulled one back and found a piano hiding underneath. Heather lifted a corner of another in curiosity and discovered a large desk underneath. She got very excited at this point, but I suddenly felt a chill pass through me.

How could that be? It was sweltering hot in that attic, and yet, I was having goose bumps. A shadow moved just beyond the pool of light and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. As I moved closer to Heather I heard a creak in the floorboards under her feet.

"Heather, this isn't a good idea. The floor is old. It could be rotted..."

"It's had all this weight on it for a century, Mark," she said dismissively. "It's not going to give way just because I-_AAIIIIIEEEEE!"_

With a sickening crash, the floor did just that, and Heather fell through. I lunged for her and closed my hand on her wrist. She dangled ten feet above the nursery room floor below.

"Hold onto her, Sam!" Suddenly Al was there. Where the hell had he been? Was he the shadow I'd seen? But no, I could always see Al, light or no light. I didn't have the breath to demand answers at that point, however. "If she falls from here, she'll keep going all the way to the first floor!" Al exclaimed frantically.

"_Marrrrk?" _Heather wailed from below. _"Don't let go!"_

"I won't!" I grunted with the effort. _Not if I can help it_, I vowed grimly to myself. I didn't stop to wonder where that thought originated.

It was hot, grimy and I was sweating like a mule. Heather's wrist was becoming slicker, and I reached through to grab further down her arm with my other hand. Slowly, gruelingly, I pulled her up enough to allow her to swing her other hand up and catch hold of a joist at the edge of the opening. I mentally thanked Mark for working out and keeping his body strong. If I had leaped into a weaker man, I could never have done it.

Al kept up a patter of encouragement until I hissed at him to "shut up and hide! I'll explain later." He looked confused, but backed away around the chimney to wait and watch. Another minute, and I was able to grab the back waistband of her jeans and hauled her the rest of the way out of the gaping hole, all the while trying to avoid the jagged, splintered edges.

Gingerly I pulled Heather back across the floor and we both collapsed gasping against a steamer trunk. Heather was shaking with reaction and covered with cuts and abrasions, but I pulled her closer and hugged her. After a long moment, she whispered shakily, "Okay...note to self...fix attic floor."

Heather refused my offer to patch up her cuts and scrapes for her, but she didn't argue when I insisted she go downstairs to treat them herself. I told her I'd come down shortly after I finished examining the roof for her. She nodded, much subdued, and said she'd have a "cold one"-iced tea, she qualified-waiting for me. Though she put on a brave front, I noticed she moved a bit unsteadily as she headed downstairs. Al stepped back into view.

"We did it, Al! We saved her!" I smiled triumphantly. I always feel elated when I've changed history for the better, when I've put right something that once went wrong. Al didn't seem to share my enthusiasm, however.

"Ah, yeah. You saved her _this time_, Sam."

I frowned. "_This time_? You mean the fluctuations are still there? Heather still dies?"

My holographic companion looked harried. "You saved Heather from falling through the attic floor," Al agreed, "so she doesn't die..._today_. Ziggy says that as soon as you pulled her up, the probability increased to a ninety-six point three percent chance that she still dies tomorrow."

My stomach felt like lead. "How?" I said, dully.

Al punched at the handset, whacked it on the side once or twice, then turned it to face me. The readout showed a newspaper article that stated Heather Connelly died on Sunday, August 12th, 2007. The cause of death was blunt trauma...she was crushed to death when the chimney of her home collapsed on her.

I felt sick. What good was saving someone's life, only to have them die soon after? "Is this why I haven't leaped yet?" I asked Al. He nodded.

"This house of hers is a death-trap waiting to happen, Sam," said Mr. Doom-and-Gloom. "She'd be much better off getting rid of it and buying into a nice condo somewhere."

"She won't do that, Al. This house is her dream home."

Al snorted. "Dream home? It's more like a nightmare, if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you. What does Ziggy about these fluctuations? Are they the reason why one resolution is leading to another problem here?"

The handset blinked a furious sequence of colors as Ziggy ran the probability calculations. "She's only fifty percent sure that's the reason, Sam," said Al when Ziggy finished. "She's still insisting there's a _ghost_ in the machine, if you can believe that!"

"A ghost," I mused thoughtfully. The concept wasn't as ludicrous as I might once have believed. I had some suspicions forming, and I didn't like where they were leading.

"Yeah, kinda screwy, ain't it?" Al chuckled. "I think her hard drive's skipped a groove." The handset emitted a noise that sounded suspiciously like a raspberry and Al scowled back at it. I wasn't as skeptical as Al, though. This leap was getting stranger by the minute. I was seeing things that all possible logic told me didn't exist, experiencing memories that weren't mine from a host I shouldn't have any conscious connection to, and my Observer was having to deal with that same host back in the Waiting Room, who was perfectly alert, aware and somehow seeing through my eyes.

I took a deep breath. Strangeness or not, I still had a job to do.

"Have Ziggy do some research and see what you can find out about the family that built this place," I told Al. "Heather's having trouble with her research, and I'm curious to know why all this stuff was put up here." I didn't tell Al that I thought it might be connected to the figures I thought I'd seen, but he nodded anyway. The more information I had, the better I'd be able to help Heather. Then I remembered: "And Al, you need to be careful when you step in. Heather saw you the last time."

"What?" Al gaped, the cigar halted halfway to his mouth. "Sam, that's impossible! I'm tuned into _your_ neurons, not hers!"

"I know, Al, I know," I said wearily. "But she described you down to the shirt you're wearing and the cigar you're waving around. Heather's not an innocent five-year-old," I continued, "but she _is_ pagan. I think I read somewhere that pagans spend a lot of time developing their psychic talents. I don't know if that has anything to do with her being able to see you, but there's something very weird going on in this leap, so be careful." Al nodded in agreement.

Another thought occurred to me. "Oh, and also see if you can find out how potentially strong this mental connection is between Mark and me. I was remembering things from his and Heather's mutual past. That's not supposed to happen, either, but it is. Talk to Mark. Maybe he's got some latent psychic ability, too."

Al looked as though I'd asked him to dress in a tutu and dance _Swan Lake_, but he promised to do his best.

I let out an exasperated sigh of frustration after Al left. How many times would I have to save Heather's life? Not that I had any objections; Heather was easy company when the past didn't get in the way, and I loved her wicked sense of humor, but the edginess of knowing she could be in danger at any moment was sure to communicate itself to her sooner or later. Probably sooner. Heather was a very perceptive woman, as I was finding out.

I glanced around the attic again. One of the trunks was a little too close to the broken floor, so I grabbed the leather handle on the side and pulled it back. It was heavy, but not overly so and it _clunked_ inside as I shifted it. Knowing it would please Heather-and wanting to please her very much-I slowly dragged it over to the stairs and hefted it. Not bad. If I was careful, I could manage it.

Heather met me at the bottom with a glass of iced tea, but her eyes widened in delight when she saw the crate. I was sweating with the strain and exertion, and noticing this, she grabbed one handle and took some of the weight. It shifted again and she heard the _thunk_ from inside.

"Oooo!" she exclaimed. "Let's bring it out to the other room!" We lugged it past the plastic sheeting and into the next room. Someday it might be a dining room, but for now it was empty. A washed-out, torn and threadbare Oriental carpet covered most of the hardwood floor, and faded, flocked red wallpaper was peeling in places on the bare walls.

"Where's all your furniture?" I asked as we set the trunk down.

"_My_ furniture is mostly in storage," she replied, pushing her glasses back up her freckled nose. "Except my bed, which is upstairs, and Callie's, which is down the hall in the room I'm doing over for her. Anything that came with the house is out in the carriage house until I can decide if I want to keep it or sell it. Late Victorian furniture is fairly ugly and uncomfortable," she grinned wryly.

"How do you want to try and open this?" I asked, gesturing to the trunk, and trying to keep my mind off the thought of Heather's bed upstairs. Too much of Al must have rubbed off on me when we switched places that one time. I still couldn't keep all his sordid thoughts out of my head. Mark wasn't helping.

"I may have something we can use in the carriage house," she replied, mercifully unconscious of my inner turmoil. "I'll be right back," she excused herself, and returned several minutes later with a hammer and chisel. "I thought I remembered seeing these out there," she explained, "but they were buried back by the workbench, and it wasn't easy to wiggle my way through."

I wished she hadn't said, _"wiggle."_ Determined to keep my mind firmly on the task at hand, I took the tools from her and not-so-carefully hacked away at the hasp on the trunk. After several vicious blows, where I purged a few mental images being fed to me, the trunk conceded defeat and yielded its treasure. Heather opened the lid and we looked inside. Several books, all uniform in size and thickness, lay neatly snugged together. Two smaller trunks-unlocked, thankfully-opened up to reveal small china dolls with clothes. Heather squealed with such delight, she reminded me of my kid sister Katie at Christmas one year, getting the bicycle she'd been hoping to get, even if she couldn't ride it until spring.

We opened two or three of the books and soon realized they were journals, all written in the same delicate hand. The front page of each book read simply, _Personal Private Property of Madeline Alice Henderson. _I met Heather's eyes and they were sparkling with excitement. I could tell she couldn't wait to read them."So much for tearing up carpeting today," she grinned.

For the next hour I helped Heather bring down some of the lighter trunks and boxes. The ones which required keys to open were set aside. I tried to pick one of the locks, but I wasn't as skilled at it as Al claimed to be. I wondered briefly where he'd picked up _that_ particular talent, but I didn't really want to know _how_ or_ why_ he'd acquired it. It was probably something lurid.

Heather wanted to go back up to the desk she'd seen to search the drawers for keys, but I refused to allow her to go, and though she simmered a bit, she acquiesced. The very real fear of what she'd just been through was still fresh in her mind, and made her cautious rather than combative. I went up instead and picked my way carefully over to the desk and removed the drop-cloth. As thoroughly as I could, I rummaged through all the drawers, nooks and cubbyholes, only to come up empty-handed. Crestfallen, I turned to leave. A cold feeling suddenly brushed past me, chilling me to the bone. With a bit of nervousness I didn't want to admit, I looked back and saw a glimmer near the desk.

A woman stood there, in a long skirt, wearing a blouse with large, puffy sleeves. Her hair was done up in a bun at the nape of her neck, and _she was translucent!_ I could almost see through her! She looked at me, smiled, and pointed to the back of the desk, then vanished. The hairs on the back of my neck rose again, but I went back to the desk and examined the area the woman had pointed to. Barely visible in the flashlight was a small, round wooden button. I pushed it and heard a _pop_ from inside the lower left drawer. Opening it, I could see the bottom of the drawer, a false bottom, had popped up. And lying inside, covered with cobwebs and dust, was a small ring of keys.

I knew this time I wasn't imagining things. I _did_ see the woman, and she showed me the secret release for the drawer! Whoever she was, and I had a pretty good idea, she _wanted_ me to find the keys!

Heather was delighted with the key ring when I returned downstairs, and I struggled with whether I should tell her what I'd seen or not. The logical side of my brain denied what I saw and tried to rationalize it away, while my emotional side insisted what I saw was real. Either way, I was reluctant to appear foolish in front of her, so in the end I said nothing.

As the afternoon wore on, we continued to discover some of the treasures that had been hidden in the attic. Old books, china, linens, pewter and silver, clothing and personal items; Heather was the most excited when we opened a trunk and found more old china dolls and their clothes. It looked like a bunch of old rubbish to me, but she was as delighted as if she'd found a box full of gold coins, and began a one-sided conversation with respect to their restoration.

In short order Heather retrieved her laptop from her room and began compiling a database of everything we'd found. It was an older model, I noticed, and she repeatedly drummed her fingers lightly on the keyboard while she waited for it to process and save the entries she made. In spite of that, she looked so happy that I couldn't help asking, "Did you want to go out with your friends tonight and sing?"

She sobered. "Mark, I haven't sung in public for well over a year. I'm really rusty!"

"Well, so am I," I said, reassuringly. "But I'm willing to try if you are."

Heather gave me a long, measured look, as if trying to decide what my motive might be. Then she smiled and said, "Sure, if you'd like. I can meet you there."

"We could go together," I suggested. I didn't want her going up into the attic again without me, even though I knew nothing _should_ happen until the next day.

"I need to clean up, Mark," she protested. "And frankly," here she chuckled again, giving me the once-over with her eyes, "so do _you_!"

Looking down at my filthy, dusty, plaster-covered clothes I ruefully agreed. But I extracted a promise from her to meet me at the restaurant for dinner before the karaoke started.

Driving back to Mark's place I thought over what we'd discovered that day. I was sure the questions running through _my_ mind were also running through Heather's. _Who_ had put all those things up in the attic, and _how_ had they gotten them there-especially the heavy furniture? There was no way it could have been hauled up the narrow back stairs. The more puzzling question was _why_? And why had the attic been sealed away?

What secrets did that old house harbor? Who was the woman I'd seen in the attic? And who was the man who had glared at me earlier from the second floor window? I knew now that Heather was not completely alone in the house, and I had little doubt that something supernatural was at work, but it was so confusing. Something _wanted_ the past to be discovered, and something else was willing to kill to keep it hidden. I had to find the truth before anything else happened to Heather.

10


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

A couple hours later, showered and changed into a pair of black dress slacks and a white, short-sleeved button-down shirt, I waited for Heather outside _Chansons Karaoke Club_. A peek inside told me I had arrived first and none of Heather's friends had shown up yet. She pulled up a few minutes later in her beat-up sedan and we went inside and were shown to a table. There weren't many people yet, so we were quickly served. Heather assured me the food here was excellent.

She looked particularly attractive, with her hair curled and pulled back from her face by a clip comb. The blue dress she wore was a deeper blue than her eyes, but set off the red highlights in her hair. Against the possible chill of the evening she had a lace shawl that looked handmade. She grinned rather sheepishly and said, "I found the shawl in one of the trunks and just had to bring it!"

As we ate, Heather told me about some letters she'd found, bundled up with ribbon. "Nearly all the letters were written by someone named Armand de Bohun, addressed to Maddie Henderson."

"Well, we know who put the furniture and stuff up in the attic," I commented. "Now we need to find out why. Those letters should be interesting to read," I said. "We might be able to more from them."

"They were love letters," Heather said, impishly.

"Love letters?"

"Yeah, I didn't read them all, because I needed to get ready for tonight, and some of them are in French, so I'll have to go slowly to be able to understand what I'm reading."

Did I know how to read or speak French? I couldn't remember. Al had told me once that I knew several modern languages, and a few dead ones, but I couldn't remember now which ones they were.

Heather quickly related what she'd _had_ been able to learn. "From what I can gather, it seems that Maddie met Armand de Bohun-which is a very unusual last name, I might add-sometime in the summer of 1901. He was an itinerate artist, and didn't have a lot of money or connections. Her father apparently took a dislike to de Bohun immediately and forbade his daughter seeing him. But Maddie seems to have been at least as stubborn as her old man, because she continued to see him in secret."

"Did he ever find out?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "The letters I could read were only between the two of them. Somehow, Maddie's letters to de Bohun must have been returned to her, because they were bundled together with the ones he wrote her. It made reading them much easier, even without understanding some of the French, because they were arranged chronologically."

"I'd like to see them," I said sincerely. "Maybe I can help you interpret them."

"I thought you only spoke German?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I shrugged. "I've picked up a smattering of stuff here and there," I said non-committally, and thankfully she let it drop.

The conversation soon turned to what we had done in our lives since college. A very touchy subject, I knew, since Heather had been the one left behind while Mark moved on. She had evidently moved on as well, because she had married and had a daughter. I asked her about Callie, about her job before she retired, and what she had been doing before she bought the house. About her daughter and her job she was very animated, but about her personal life...a shadow passed over her face. It was a long moment before she spoke.

"I guess you know I'm widowed," she began. I nodded. "Terry died a little over a year ago. We'd been married just over twelve years." Part of my mind filed away the information that Heather had waited a long time after college to get married and start a family. She continued speaking, "He was killed by a drunk driver. I was totally unprepared. I mean, I knew he had to travel-he was in sales, and it was part of his job-and I knew the risks he took every day. He was always a very careful driver. The problem was, not everyone was as careful as Terry."

She sipped her coffee. "Two-thirds of the family income had just been stripped away. My sister Jenny has a friend who's a lawyer, who agreed to file a suit on my behalf against the trucking company _pro bono_, since I didn't have much money. Terry had some insurance, but it wasn't a whole lot. After the final expenses and paying off the bills, there wasn't much left. But litigation always takes so long to resolve. You have to go through appeal after appeal, extension after extension. I knew I couldn't count on a swift verdict. The wheels of justice turn slowly, when they turn at all."

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I let her talk.

"I didn't know if I'd be able to keep the house, so I got rid of a lot of stuff. I just kept the things I really didn't want to part with." She gave a wry chuckle. "It's amazing the _junk_ that accumulates over the years!" She took another sip of coffee and her expression sobered. "About three months after Terry died, my boss suffered a heart attack. He didn't die from it, but he had to reduce the stress level in his life, and that meant closing the factory. So I was suddenly out of job."

"You've had it pretty rough," I sympathized.

She shrugged. "There were others who had it worse," she said simply, lifting her chin a little. "I knew that I'd probably lose the house. The money I could have spent to keep it went to pay outstanding bills and Terry's last expenses. So I packed up anything I truly cared about and put it in storage so I could concentrate on selling the house before I could be foreclosed on."

She paused for a long moment, as if gathering her thoughts. Her voice was low when she spoke, as if it was costing her an effort to keep it under control.

"It was late August when the storm came up. Almost a year ago, now. Tornado watches were called for all morning. But our little town never seemed to get hit with the bad stuff..." she trailed off.

"Until that day?" I prompted gently.

She nodded. "It was horrible," she said in a low voice. "We heard the sirens, Callie and I. The sky literally went green. I'd only seen it do that a couple times before, but we'd never gotten hit. We ran for the basement and threw ourselves into the bathroom barely in time. The noise was awful! Everyone says it's like a freight train, but it wasn't. It was a demon, howling, shrieking, shaking the house right down to the foundation. I could hear wood splintering, glass shattering, metal screeching against metal as it got ripped apart. Callie was screaming, I was crying, and I couldn't hear either of us."

She took a deep shuddering breath. "It was hard to breathe. It felt like the air was being sucked out of our lungs. And it went on forever." She paused and took a long sip of coffee. "We learned later it was an F3-not the worst, certainly, but it was slow-moving. It stayed on the ground for over a half hour. I know it must have spent at least ten minutes on my house alone!" She gave a weak chuckle. "All I could think at the time was, 'Well, at least this gets rid of the squirrels in my attic!'"

I gave her an encouraging smile.

"When Callie and I were finally able to emerge, it was like walking through Ground Zero after a nuclear bomb. There was nothing recognizable left in the neighborhood. Just piles of scrap where the homes once stood, mine included. I was numb. In the space of a few short weeks I'd lost my husband, my job, my home..."

She lifted her chin and her eyes glittered with resolve and determination. Her voice was firm as she declared, "But we survived, Callie and me. What I'd lost wasn't as important as what I still had!"

"Good for you!" I said quietly. "You're a survivor, not a victim."

"Thank you," she replied simply, and drew a deep breath. "I could have rebuilt, I suppose-they hadn't foreclosed on me yet and I still had homeowner's insurance-but I was contacted by a developer and offered a tidy sum for my little plot of land. It seems they were moving in and buying up everyone around there so they could build upscale apartments and condos I'd never be able to afford." _Mark's neighborhood, _I realized.

"So how did you manage to buy the house you've got now?" I asked. "It's not exactly a two-bedroom bungalow."

She smiled and shrugged. "Remember I mentioned Jenny's lawyer friend? Long story short, someone inside the company blew the whistle and turned over evidence they'd known about their driver's drinking problem and had covered it up. The court found in my favor and I received a comfortable settlement.

"Callie and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in a not-so-nice section of town. As soon as the settlement cleared, I went house-hunting right away. I found the Henderson house, and fell in love with it. I knew it had a lot of problems, but I'm willing to put in the effort it's going to take to bring the house back to its former glory. I know it can be a beautiful home again!" We ate in comfortable silence for several minutes. I had a sudden insight now why the house was so important to Heather. It represented her will to succeed against the odds. Knowing that, it would be impossible to ask her to give it up.

A few minutes later, Heather excused herself and headed off to the ladies' room.

"That's some kind of woman," Al said admiringly. I jumped, startled, but settled quickly before it would be noticed by any of the other patrons. I pretended to be busy over my steak, but hissed at him.

"Don't you ever knock?"

"You tell me how a holographic image is supposed to knock on something that's not there, and I'll give Gooshie a big, sloppy kiss." He grinned, knowing of course there was no way that would happen. And the imagery made me shudder.

"Al, what have you found out? And be quick before she comes back!"

Remembering, Al got down to business. "Ziggy's still having some problems with the probability program, but she insists Heather still dies tomorrow night, sometime after five o'clock."

"At night?" I murmured. "You said the chimney falls on her. What's she doing poking around the chimney at night?"

"I don't know, Sam! I'm just the bearer of bad tidings, here! Maybe she's looking for Santa Claus!" He sounded offended and I relented. I muttered an apology and he continued. "I talked to Dr. Beeks and she says that from her research on the pagan faith that it's entirely possible Heather is 'awakening her psychic potential', if she hasn't done that already. In view of that, Ziggy conjectures that it's entirely possible that Heather is 'tuned in' enough to be able to see me."

"Ziggy said that?" I scoffed. "She's a computer. She deals in fact, not a lot of hocus-pocus!"

"I'm only telling you what she's discovered, Sam. I didn't say she believed it. But it could explain why Heather's able to see me."

"Okay, okay," I said hurriedly, keeping a watchful eye on the corridor. "What about this connection I have with Mark?"

"Dr. Beeks says she's still trying to figure that one out," Al replied. "She says it's _possible_ Mark has some latent psychic abilities he's not aware of. Or she says the Almighty might be stepping in here. But it's all conjecture, there's no way to prove or disprove it. What's fact is that he can see everything you're doing, and he's figured out why you're here. He's frustrated, but he knows you're the only one who can help Heather."

"Frustrated?" I asked quietly.

Al grinned as he opened the Imaging Chamber door. "Yeah, he's falling for her big time, and he's as jealous as hell of you!" Al left and the door closed. A few moments later Heather returned. I smiled at her, but a part of me reveled in smugness. So Mark was jealous that I was spending time with Heather! Well, hopefully, if all went well, I could save Heather one last time and leap out, and Mark could come back and spend as much time as he wanted with her. With any luck, they'd have another good thirty years or so to spend in each other's company.

As soon as we finished dinner, we moved over to the bar side of the restaurant. Some of Heather's friends had already shown up and waved us over to their table. Joe's wife, Karen, a tall, statuesque brunette, exclaimed in delight over Heather's shawl and the two women had their heads together, prattling away about Heather's recent discoveries. The guy running the karaoke looked up and smiled delightedly.

"Heather!" he called. "My favorite singer!" He strode over to our table and gave her a peck on the cheek and a long hug. She returned the hug without embarrassment. He was a much-younger man whom everyone called DJ Derek, and he seemed to know Heather very well. I felt a stab of jealousy I knew didn't come from me, but it subsided when Heather asked Derek about his wife. She grabbed a couple songbooks off the pile and we began flipping through them.

"His favorite singer?" I couldn't help asking in a teasing tone.

Heather smiled and shrugged, a little embarrassed. "He really likes the songs I sing," she explained. Then as if to cover her embarrassment, she said quickly, "Pick something you'd like to sing, write down your first name and the song title and turn it in to Derek. He'll call us all up in turn."

Leaping around from one person's life to the next doesn't always give me a chance to have fun. Mostly I concentrate on finding out what I'm there to do and try to do it as well as I can as quickly as I can. There usually isn't much downtime available. When I'm done, I leap. It's as simple as that. Sometimes if I remember the host I just left, Al will give me an update on how things have been changed for the better. But most of the time I have no recollection of the people whose lives I've touched. It's always made me a bit sad, not to know what happens after I leap out, but being able to make a difference in people's lives sometimes has its own rewards. Like tonight.

All my life I've enjoyed music and song. There have been a few lives I've leaped into where I've had a chance to sing. I remember performing as Don Quixote in _Man of LaMancha_, one of my favorite musicals. On another occasion I was a painted-faced Eighties' rock star. And in one life, a singer at an Italian wedding where I had to sing a song in Italian...one of the modern languages I _didn't_ know! Al had to feed me the lines as I sang them. But I had never had a chance to sing at a karaoke club, where I got to choose the songs _I_ wanted to sing. So this evening I picked several I'd always wanted to do and sang my heart out, enjoying the moment while it lasted. Frank Sinatra, Elvis, John Lennon, from Broadway to glitter rock, I had fun with all of it. There weren't many singers, so it was a fast rotation and we all got to sing several times.

Joe's rich baritone was well-suited for the Rat Pack songs he preferred. I joined him in a couple I remembered, and he was delighted to have someone who could sing Frank Sinatra to his Dean Martin. Stan's voice was quite a bit grittier than Joe's and he preferred the heavy-metal rock songs of the 1980's. That was okay by me, since there were several songs from that decade that I remembered and enjoyed, and we were able to sing a few songs together. Joe's wife Karen only sang a one or two songs, very nervously, and we applauded the courage it took her to get up and sing in public.

Heather was simply amazing! I couldn't believe what a great voice she had, and my astonishment must have shown on my face, because I caught Stan grinning at me. "Did I lie?" he demanded good-naturedly. No, he certainly hadn't! Her first offering was "Memory" from the musical _Cats_, and when she returned to our thunderous applause, grinning self-effacingly, I asked her, "Why haven't you gone professional?"

Again that rueful smile and shrug. "Life got in the way, Mark. I was afraid of failing, so I never tried." I wanted to ask her more, but one of the other patrons came up to congratulate her. The other songs she performed were either Broadway, Swing Band style or popular love songs. When she sang Linda Eder's _"I'm Afraid This Must Be Love",_ I knew I didn't need Al to tell me Mark had fallen hard for her. The thought came through loud and clear, _I never knew she could sing like that._

Occasionally through the evening, one of the other patrons or Derek himself would ask Heather to sing a duet with them, and she cheerfully obliged. I could see she was enjoying herself, and I wanted more than anything to sing with her. There were a few I could have chosen, but decided to keep it fun and casual, and finally got her to sing _"Paradise by the Dashboard Lights"_ with me. At one point, when Derek played a Swing Band song between the singers, I noticed that Heather couldn't sit still, but was bouncing happily in her seat. I stood up and held out my hand to her.

"Come on," I grinned. "Let's show these kids how to dance!"

Amid teasing from the guys and encouragement from Karen, she let me lead her to the dance floor where I was thrilled to discover she really knew how to swing it. It only took a minute before the dance floor cleared and everyone stood aside to watch us. Derek hadn't been playing entire songs between the performers since the evening began, but this time he didn't cut it short and let us dance all the way to the final chord when I bent Heather back over my knee in a rousing finale. _There's more to Heather than I ever knew, _I heard in the back of my mind, and there was nothing I could add to that.

Around midnight her friends left, but Heather still had one more song to sing. She wasn't a bit offended at their leaving before she performed. That was the level of comfort she had in her friendship with them. She took the stage one last time and began to sing. I knew the song. It had been performed originally by a male artist, but now, sung by Heather, it became a smooth, sultry ballad, designed to entice and persuade.

_"I know it's late,_

_ I know you're weary,_

_ I know your plans don't include me._

_ Still here we are, both of us lonely,_

_ Longing for shelter from all that we see._

_ Why should we worry? No one will care._

_ Look at the stars, so far away._

_ We've got tonight. Who needs tomorrow?_

_ We've got tonight, babe. Why don't you stay?"_

I was mesmerized. I heard the question in the song and knew how Mark was interpreting it. But Heather wasn't singing to me; she was singing to the room. And even though there weren't that many people left at this hour, she sang as if to a houseful.

From behind the pillar, I heard Al's voice, "Ohhh Sam...if only I wasn't a hologram, I'd stay the night with her!"

"How long have you been hiding there, Al?" I asked, quietly amused.

"For most of the evening, Sam," Al murmured, and his eyes never left Heather. "She's got an amazing voice."

"Yeah," I said softly. "I know." There was no leering or mockery in Al's tone now, I noticed. He was a complete convert.

_"Deep in my soul, I've been so lonely._

_ All of my hopes fading away._

_ I've longed for love, like everyone else does._

_ I know I'll keep searching even after today..."_

"She should have been a professional, Sam, with a voice like that," Al said softly.

I could only nod. Mark couldn't shake the feeling that Heather was still trying to say in a song what she didn't dare say out loud, and that feeling was coming through loud and clear. It didn't help that Heather seemed to be looking right at me.

_"We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow?_

_ Let's make it last. Let's find a way._

_ Turn out the light. Come take my hand, now._

_ We've got tonight, babe. Why don't you stay?"_

It was a shame that not too many people were there to hear her sing. She performed the song perfectly, with a sexy sultriness that brought a physical reaction to me. It was getting harder to repress the sensations I was experiencing.

"That was amazing, Heather," I told her as she returned to our table and picked up her things. "I've never heard that song done better!"

"Thanks, Mark. I'm no Bob Seger, but I did my best," she smiled happily. "Shall we go? I'm done for tonight, and I need to make an early start tomorrow."

"More work on the house?" I guessed as I escorted her to her car. "What are your plans for tomorrow?"

"I've got to get my daughter's room habitable. I rented a steamer to take off the wallpaper and I haven't used it yet. I need to return it Monday. Then the walls will need sanding, priming and painting."

"You're going to get all that done in a day?" I asked, skeptically. We'd reached her car by this time and she unlocked it and threw her purse and shawl inside.

"No, of course not," she countered as she got into the car. "But I'll go as far as I can. I talked to Karen about it tonight, and she wanted to come over and help, but she and Joe have other plans."

"Well, count me in," I said firmly. "I'll see you tomorrow, bright and early. Just make sure there's coffee!" I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek before heading to my own vehicle. I didn't turn back to see what effect that had had on her. I knew what it did to me.

I woke to the sound of thunder and rain. It looked like it was going to be a miserable, wet day-just the perfect kind of day to work indoors. Al made an appearance as I was finishing breakfast.

"Ooo, that bagel and cream cheese looks good, Sam," he almost drooled. "All I had this morning was a cup of coffee."

"I'm going to wait until I get to Heather's for that," I commented. "Have you found out anything I can use?"

"Well, that depends on what you can use," he stalled. "I did find out some interesting background information. Wanna hear it?"

"Shoot," I said, as I cleaned up.

"Charles Arthur Henderson, born 1850 in Chicago, Illinois, died 1918 of influenza in Hampshire, Illinois."

"Influenza?" I asked, surprised. "The flu killed him?"

"The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than World War One, Sam," Al said, reading from the display on Ziggy's handset. "Somewhere between 20 and 40 million people died. It's been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history."

"I had no idea," I said, amazed.

"Yeah, Ziggy says more people died of influenza in a single year than in four years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. It was also known as 'Spanish Flu' or 'La Grippe'. The outbreak was a global disaster of _epic_ proportions!" He waved his arms wide to emphasize "epic".

I whistled. "And that's what Henderson died from?"

"Henderson _and_ his wife Alice," Al confirmed. "Henderson's surviving daughter, Madeline was born in 1880 and died in 1980. She inherited her father's estate upon his death and never married. It says here she was active in various local charity organizations until ill health forced her to retire in the 1970's. After the Influenza Outbreak she began taking in local orphans and raising them. You know, kids whose folks died of the 'flu. She kept this up even during the Second World War, providing the kids with a home, an education, and…love-"

His voice broke for a moment, and I waited in quiet sympathy. Al never talked much about his youth, but I knew he'd been in and out of orphanages from a young age. "Wish I'd had someone like her," he murmured, then cleared his throat and scrolled through his information. "She eventually had to give it up as she got older, and from about 1960 she had a companion that lived with her until her death twenty years later. Then her companion lived in the house until 2005 when _she_ died."

Al continued filling me in as I drove to Heather's.

"You were asking about Armand de Bohun, Sam," he reminded me. "It's a good thing he has such an uncommon last name. The only references Ziggy can find are a genealogy reference and an obituary notice dated June 23, 1903."

"Obituary?" I digested that. "How did he die?"

"He was apparently the only casualty of a failed robbery attempt at the First Union Bank in Chicago."

"First Union Bank?" I stopped Al. "That's the same bank Maddie's father worked at." I thought for a moment as I drove along. "Look in the historical archives, Al, and in the newspaper reports. Is there any mention of an attempted robbery at the First Union Bank in 1903?"

Al tapped in the request and a moment later said, "Yeah, there is. _'Police officials arrested two men in conjunction with a foiled robbery attempt at the First Union Bank yesterday in which one innocent bystander was slain,'_" he quoted. "_'Witnesses say the men entered the bank aggressively and demanded that every person there remain immobile. They then proceeded to appropriate money and jewelry from all present._

"'_Mrs. Edmund Lindenhurst, who was in a family way, fainted from fear. When Monsieur Armand de Bohun reached over to catch her as she fell, one of the gunmen shouted in a loud voice that he was to remain stationary. But de Bohun continued to assist the fallen Mrs. Lindenhurst, and was cold-bloodedly shot for his gallantry. Monsieur de Bohun perished, and the two murderers fled the premises.'_" Al gave an exasperated sigh. "Geez, the guy was only trying to help a pregnant lady, and for that he gets his lights put out!"

"Is there any more?" I asked.

"Uh…yeah, hang on here," Al returned to the article. "_'A statement was released by a spokesman for First Union Bank earlier today. 'This was a tragic and unhappy event at our establishment,' said Mr. C. Arthur Henderson, investment banker. 'While occurrences such as these are becoming more and more frequent in these troubled times, we wish our patrons to rest assured that their money is safe at First Union Bank, and they may continue to patronize our institution with confidence and security. The fine officers of the Chicago Police Department are to be commended for their swiftness in the performance of their duty.'_" Al broke off again and scowled. "Huh! Nothing at all about the young man that died! You'd think he'd say _something_."

"I've got a feeling he deliberately didn't," I said slowly. When Al looked at me quizzically, I explained. "Armand de Bohun was seeing his daughter, Maddie, and he didn't like it." I related to Al what Heather had learned from Maddie's letters.

"Holy moley, Sam!" Al gasped. "This guy, de Bohun, shows up in her father's bank, and is the only person killed during a robbery attempt. Wouldn't you say that's suspicious, Sam?"

"I don't think you could prove that in a court of law, Al," I relied with a wry grin.

Al pulled a sour face. "I knew you'd say that," he groused.

A thought occurred to me. "Al, is there anyway I can access this information so I can show Heather?"

"Sure, Sam," he said agreeably. "This is all public domain knowledge. You could probably pull it up on the internet on Mark's fancy laptop there in the back seat."

I smiled. Technology was a wonderful thing.

11


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Heather's eyes widened as she scanned the on-line information, in particular the genealogy chart. "Hokey smokes," she breathed. "I knew the last name was the same, but I never thought..." She looked up at me and the warmth in her eyes stirred up a similar warmth inside me. "Thank you, Mark! This is amazing!"

"You said the last name was the same," I pounced on that. "The same as what?"

Heather smiled and replied, "My maternal grandmother's maiden name was de Bohun. We don't know much about that side of the family because my grandma died while my Mom was still young and she never got the chance to ask much about family history. I only know the name of my great-grandfather, Laurent de Bohun. This chart shows that Laurent had a younger brother named Armand who died in 1903."

I felt a feeling of goose bumps again. "He was your great-uncle?"

"Yeah! A great-uncle I never knew I had until now. Thank you so much for this! I'm going to send this link to Mom. She's the genealogist for both sides of my family. She's going to love this!"

While I waited for Heather, I explored the rest of the first level. I hadn't really had a chance to see much of the inside of the house beyond the kitchen, dining area and the attic. The house I'd grown up in, back in Indiana, was an old farmhouse built around the turn of the century, so it was newer than this one, but my family had lived in that house for generations. It had a lot of quirks and irregularities about it, as each generation added something new to it or changed its layout.

Heather's house had remained pretty much untouched for the last hundred years or so. Evidently, old man Henderson didn't like change while he'd lived here, and his daughter saw no need to change anything after his death. Beyond several layers of peeling wallpaper and multi-color chips of paint and plaster coming off the walls, it didn't look like much of anything had been done to improve the look of the house that wasn't merely cosmetic. And it seemed several years of neglect had taken its toll.

Next to the kitchen was a small room that might have been a closet or a servant's room. It was difficult to tell which, since there were no shelves on the walls and it was empty. As I moved around the house I noted marble mantelpieces on the fireplaces in the dining room and in a front parlor-type room. This one was fitted with shelves in the walls, and had a huge mahogany desk in one corner. I poked around the desk but the drawers were all locked shut. The room was still dusty and dirty, and I knew Heather hadn't had time to get in here and clean up. As I straightened up, I caught sight of myself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. Behind me, reflected in the mirror, was an older man, scowling angrily at me. He was dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing, with a short-collared white shirt under a dark green frock coat.

My heart thudding, I whirled around and saw..._nothing._ I looked back in the mirror. He was there.

_Get out of here! _He mouthed the words. I couldn't hear him, but the implication was clear. He didn't want me there. Furious for Heather's sake, I scowled back and said aloud, "No!"

The man in the mirror looked thunderously at me and vanished just as Heather came into the room. "Here you are! I wondered where you went. Something wrong?"

A bit shaken, and more than a little embarrassed at having been caught once again talking to myself, I smiled and changed the subject. "Did you get your letter sent to your Mom?"

She eyed me suspiciously. "Yes, I think she'll find the links very interesting. She's been stalled finding out any details on her family at all. You saw something in here, didn't you?"

The question caught me completely off-guard. I hadn't fooled her for a moment. "It was nothing, just my imagination," I dismissed it.

"You saw Charles Arthur Henderson, didn't you?" she pressed. I could only gape at her. "I've seen him too, a time or two. I've felt his presence more than I've seen him, though. I think this was his private study, because he's stronger here. He doesn't like me."

I sat down on the edge of the desk. "You believe in ghosts?" I tried to sound skeptical, but recent experiences took the tone out of my voice.

Heather nodded, sitting gingerly on an old overstuffed chair. "Of course." She touched the pendant she wore at her throat. "I'm pagan, remember? And I've seen ghosts before, even before I bought this place, but never so vividly as here. I've seen Maddie, too, a few times. Her presence is much more soothing. I get the feeling she approves of me. Must be the dolls." She was making light of it, but whether it was my own experiences here or Mark's intuition, I could tell she was worried. "I hope I can keep them. That would be very cool."

"You're not thinking of selling them, are you?"

Heather sobered. "I may have to. I don't want to. I'd love to keep them with the house, but this restoration effort isn't going to be cheap. The amount I might get from selling the dolls won't make or break my budget, and I love the idea of having something valued so highly that I got for next-to-nothing..."

"Then you should keep them," I said firmly. "I know they mean a lot to you, and they bring you pleasure in having them. If it won't make a lot of difference one way or the other, keep them."

Heather's eyes softened again, and she said quietly, "Thank you for that, Mark." I felt the warm glow of that smile again, and for a moment basked in the glory of her approval. I was breaking down her defenses, and it was a good thing. Mark had a lot of past history to overcome with Heather, a lot of hurt that had to be healed if they were to have any future at all together. And I knew, just as surely as I knew my own name, that not only did I have to make sure Heather survived, but I also had to try to get her and Mark together permanently before I could leap again.

I didn't want to change the mood, but something Heather had said a moment ago worried me. "You said Henderson doesn't like you. Has he tried to scare you off?"

Again Heather nodded, her eyes troubled. "I smudged the house when I first moved in-"

"Smudged?" I asked, confused.

"It's a ritual pagans use to cleanse and purify an area. It helps get rid of negativity. Unfortunately, Arthur Henderson is a powerful spirit. The smudging kept him at bay, but there were certain places in the house-here, in the room I think was his upstairs, and so forth-that still felt bitterly cold, even though it's the middle of summer. And a couple corners of darkness that forced me to resort to sterner methods to chase them away. I think that's why he doesn't like me."

I had to tell her what I'd seen. "Heather, the other day, up in the attic, I felt..._something_...dark and dangerous, just before you fell through the floor. And afterwards, when you went downstairs, I saw a woman who showed me the catch to release the secret compartment in the desk to get the keys."

She took that in for a moment. "You think Henderson had something to do with the weakened floor?"

I stood up and paced the floor. "I don't know," I said, confused. "I mean, how could something non-corporeal affect something real?"

She hesitated a moment before she spoke. "Poltergeists can make solid things move."

We sat there in silence for a few moments, each of us thinking about the implications.

"Heather," I said hesitantly, knowing I was in for an argument, "maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe you should give up the house-"

"Absolutely not!" she said loudly, her temper rising. "Mark, I've _always_ wanted to live in a house like this! Well now I've got one, and I'm not giving it up just because a _ghost_ doesn't want me around! This is _my_ house now, and if he doesn't like it, _he's_ the one who needs to move out!"

"Okay, okay," I said, trying to calm her down. "It was just a suggestion." It was time to change the subject. "Look, I'm at your disposal for the day, why don't we work on cleaning up some of the rooms?" I brushed the dust off the seat of my jeans as I spoke, and Heather brightened up a bit.

"Are you sure? I know what _I_ was going to do today-"

"Then let me help. Just don't make me wear a silly apron or anything, okay?" I was rewarded by her laughter and a promise not to do anything of the sort.

Two hours later I was hard at work carefully cleaning the walls of the third floor nursery room. Several boxes were neatly and carefully stacked in one corner next to a very old rocking horse. A peek in the boxes revealed dolls of all different kinds. Heather must have found them in the house when she took possession and had them moved up here. This would have been a great room to be a kid in, and I imagined it filled with all kinds of books and toys.

The walls were faded now, but once must have been brilliantly colored with murals of fairy-tale and nursery rhyme characters. Humpty-Dumpty practically filled one side of the room with his wall and all the King's horses and men. Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue were across the room near a closed door that had Puss in Boots guarding it, and around the other walls were a menagerie of other nursery rhyme characters. On the ceiling above-thankfully not where Heather had broken through-the cow was jumping over the moon.

The murals had all been done in oil paints, and while I was careful in wiping them down, I noticed chips of paint flaking off in several areas. It seemed a shame to have it all deteriorate, especially since the artwork was so well done. I found a signature in one corner, but couldn't quite make it out.

"It's Howard Pyle, Sam," said Al from behind me as he stepped through the Imaging Chamber door. "He was just seventeen years old, travelling around the country trying to establish himself as an artist. Henderson must have met him somewhere and hired him to paint the nursery. Of course," Al continued wryly, "Henderson probably thought at that time he'd have enough kids to fill this room."

He looked around, taking note of the hole in the ceiling ten feet above through which Heather had dangled just the day before.

"That would have been a nasty fall, Sam," he commented, soberly. He was dressed in a green plaid jacket and dark green trousers with a bright yellow silk shirt. I often wondered if Al was color-blind.

"Al! Where have you been?" I hissed, unsure of Heather's location at the moment. Al's sudden appearance had startled me, and I was sharper than I intended to be. I relaxed a bit when I heard her singing from a room one floor below. She had a small radio tuned to a Swing Band station and was singing along to a jazzy little number. Al cocked his head to listen a moment appreciatively before turning to me.

"I've been working on all the different things you wanted me to find out, Sam," he complained. "It took some time."

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I guess I expect too much from you sometimes."

"Oh, now Sam," Al reasoned. "That's hardly fair! I'm your only link to the Project. It's my job to see you get the information you need so you can do what _you_ have to do."

"So what have you found out?"

Al was suddenly all business. "Okay, so Ziggy says that Heather still dies tonight-" he broke off and hit the handset, making it squeal, "-or very early tomorrow morning."

"What? Another complication?" This was getting really old, really fast. "What's supposed to happen?" I simmered.

"Well, the chimney tonight," Al said, unhappily. "But if she survives that there's an eighty-five percent chance she-" Al broke off again and looked sick. "Oh, no..." he moaned.

"What? Tell me, Al!"

He took a deep breath and sighed, "If she doesn't die from blunt trauma tonight with the chimney, she dies very early tomorrow morning when the house burns to the ground. The report says faulty wiring sparked it."

I felt a rush of anger. "Henderson," I growled.

"Come again?" Al asked, puzzled.

"Henderson," I said again. "It's the only thing that makes any sense. Heather just had the wiring upgraded. It couldn't have been the reason for the fire. Henderson must have started it!"

"Sam, that's ridiculous!" Al snorted. "Henderson's dead."

"His ghost, Al," I insisted. "I know he died a hundred years ago, but I saw him glaring at me out the window yesterday, and earlier today I saw him in a mirror, standing behind me. When I turned around, there was nothing there, but when I looked back in the mirror, there he was. He scowled at me and told me to get out."

"He spoke to you?" Al queried in disbelief.

I shook my head. "Not exactly," I admitted. "He mouthed the words. I couldn't hear him but it was pretty easy to read his lips. I think he's been interfering somehow with Ziggy's programming, too. That's why it's been so hard to get the information we've needed!"

"Oh, Sam," Al said sympathetically. "I think this leap is getting to you. Now it's not just Ziggy, _you're_ claiming you're seeing spooks, too! Am I the only sane one here?"

Irritated and stung, I snapped back, "Al, you know we've been through a lot together and seen a lot of strange things that _couldn't_ happen but did. Why should this be so hard to accept?"

"Because people don't come back from the dead, Sam!" Al argued. I blew out a heavy sigh and decided to let the matter drop and try a different line of thought.

"Al, if Heather were to walk away from all of this, what are her chances of survival?"

Al punched a few buttons and reported unhappily, "Ziggy says she's got a ninety-nine point eight percent chance of living to a ripe old age...but she'd be miserable."

"And her chances of spending that life with Mark?" 

"Sam," Al began warningly, "That's not why we're here."

"How do you know, Al?" I countered. "I've been living the last two days with Mark inside my head. I _know_ what he's thinking and feeling, and I'm pretty sure Heather's feeling the same." Al shook his head again in disagreement, but I insisted, "Just tell me the numbers, Al. If Heather walked away from this, what percent chance is there that she and Mark will live 'happily ever after'?" I air-quoted the phrase.

Al shook his head. "Zero chance, Sam. Working on this house is what brings them together. Without that as a catalyst, they remain friends, but never get together."

I blew out a breath. "Al, I need to find a way to save Heather in a way that doesn't trigger another catastrophe, and still get her and Mark together."

"Well how're you gonna do that, Sam?"

"Mark?" Heather's voice came from the hallway and a moment later she stood stock still in the doorway, staring in surprise directly at Al. "Who are _you?_" she asked, incredulously.

"Oh boy," I muttered. Deep in conversation with my Observer, I never heard her come up the stairs. Al spluttered something to the effect of, "I gotta go, Sam," and opened the Imaging Chamber door, but Heather called out, "No, wait! Please, don't go!" and Al stopped in his tracks.

She approached carefully, glancing first at me, than at Al. "You were here yesterday, in the driveway talking to Mark," she said, speaking directly to my holographic companion. "And later on I saw you at the karaoke bar when we were singing."

"Uh-well, you see, the thing is-" Al looked helplessly at me, but Heather shrank back and retreated a step.

"I didn't hear you," she said, nervously. "Your lips are moving, but I can't hear you. Are you Mark's spirit guide?"

I have to hand it to Al. Very often he "goes with the flow", and can improvise on the spot. He shrugged in a "why not?" manner and nodded, smiling weakly. Heather suddenly straightened and bowed respectfully to Al, who looked at me with a silly grin.

"Please stay if you will," Heather said formally. "But go if you must."

"Uh, Sam, I think it might be best if I-" Al gestured to the glowing door behind him.

"Ah, he needs to go now, Heather," I said, hating the deception, but realizing the necessity for it. "I'm sure he'll be back, _won't you,_ Al?" I said meaningfully.

"Absolutely," Al agreed, then bowed flamboyantly to Heather. "I know you can't hear me, lovely lady, but I'm gonna do my best to make sure your voice isn't stilled forever. See ya later, Sam." And the Imaging Chamber door closed behind him.

Heather looked bemused. "What was _that_ all about?"

"He was just...ah...bidding you farewell," I said lamely. I watched her carefully. "You were looking for me?" I prompted.

"Strange," she murmured. "Spirit guides aren't usually visible to anyone except the person they're helping. It's odd I should see _yours_. I never imagined you'd have one!"

"You're just very perceptive, I guess," I hedged. _Too_ perceptive for comfort, really, I thought. "Did you need something?"

She seemed to give a mental shake and smiled. "Yes! I found something really exciting down in Callie's room," she said. "Or rather, the one I'm turning into Callie's room. I think it may have been Maddie's."

I followed Heather downstairs to a back bedroom with peeling floral wallpaper and lace curtains at the window that might once have been white. Heather went over to a part of the wall that jutted into the room and took hold of the chair-rail. "Now watch this!" she exclaimed gleefully, and tugged on the chair-rail. It scraped open to reveal a shallow drawer, about a foot wide and three inches deep. It went back into the wall only about ten inches or so. Inside was a dusty book.

"Is that a Bible?" I asked.

"No, it's a journal," Heather said, taking it out of the drawer. "It's dated from about 1900 to 1903, and though it's not signed anywhere, I know it must be Maddie's. The handwriting is the same as in her letters to Armand."

"How did you discover the drawer?" I asked, fascinated, looking at its construction and pulling it in and out of the wall. It was built in as part of the chair rail, and when closed it was nearly invisible.

Heather hesitated only a moment before she replied. "Well, I remembered seeing a movie with something similar in it, so this must have been a fairly common Victorian idiosyncrasy. But in point of fact, Maddie showed me."

I looked up sharply. "She was here?"

Heather nodded. "Just for a moment. I was cleaning in the closet and when I came out she was standing right where you are, pointing at the wall. She smiled at me and disappeared." Heather gave a nervous laugh. "I guess she wanted this to be found."

I took the book from her and looked it over. Leather-bound, fragile, with pages so yellowed they were almost brown on the edges, faded ink was neatly scribed on each page in elegant handwriting. "Have you read any of it yet?" I asked.

She grinned a bit sheepishly. "I couldn't help but flip through it. I think I scanned through half of it before I remembered you'd like to see it, too, and where I found it."

"You're right about that," I smiled back. "Maybe we can get some answers from Maddie herself." All thought of cleaning was banished as we took the book over by the window and sat down on two hardwood chairs flanking a small table. I handed the book to Heather. "Go ahead," I told her. "Maddie wanted you to find it, so let's see what she wanted you to know."

Gingerly, Heather opened the fragile book and slowly paged through it, commenting as she went.

"Most of the early part of this is her quiet life here at home with her mother and the servants. Her father is mentioned a few times, but it seems he's gone quite a bit. I think we knew that already. From what she writes here, Maddie didn't get along with her father very well, and seemed happier when he was away."

"Does it mention Armand de Bohun at all?" I asked.

Heather looked up. "Oh! I forgot I wanted you to see those letters I found! Hold on a moment while I get them!" She left the room, but returned quickly with a large bundle of letters tied with a faded purple ribbon.

"Some of these are written in French," she explained, "but there are a few passages I was able to interpret. My college French is very rusty so I couldn't read everything." She sifted carefully through the delicate letters until she found the one she wanted. "Okay, listen to this: _'My dearest Madeline, I have been unable to speak with your father. He will not see me. I know he believes I am not worthy to-' _there's a few words here I can't interpret."

"Let me see," I said, gently taking the letter.

Heather looked puzzled. "I really don't remember you knowing French, Mark. I thought you only learned German in high school."

I decided bluster was the only way through this one. "A lot of years have gone by, Heather. I've learned a lot since then." Heather only nodded stiffly, and I kicked myself for reminding her that she'd been the one left behind. I concentrated on the letter since there was nothing I could say to soften that blow. Thankfully, I discovered that French was one of the languages I _was_ fluent in.

"_I know he believes I am not worthy to seek your hand in marriage, my heart,'" _I read aloud, "_'but if he would only consent to meet with me, I am sure I might convince him that I will not always be the second son of an impoverished artist. My family has a very strong desire to succeed in America, and as this is the land of opportunity, I feel certain my fortunes will improve, and I will be able to support you in the manner to which you are accustomed.'"_

I looked up at Heather. She said nothing, but was staring out the window, lost in thought. I kept reading.

"'_My darling, do not despair, for I have decided to make one more attempt to meet with your father. If he will not see me, prepare yourself, for I shall come to you and take you away with me. I would prefer to have his blessing for our union, but you are of age and it is not required by law. I can no longer bear to be parted from you. I will send word as soon as I may, that we will leave your father's house one week from tonight, at the eleventh hour when all are retired. From there shall we go to the home of the Reverend Alsip, who has agreed to marry us." _I stopped reading and looked at the date on the front of the letter: June twenty-second, nineteen hundred and three, and postmarked _Chicago, Illinois. _The letter had been written the day before Armand de Bohun was killed in an attempted bank robbery. I mentioned this to Heather.

She turned back from the window and I could see her eyes were troubled. "So he never made it back to her. Let me see what it says in her diary." She carefully turned the pages until she found an entry close to the fatal date. She nodded slowly as she read to herself, then took a deep breath. "This is really sad. This was written on the 28th of June, by the way. Listen: _'I have received no other word from my dearest Armand, other than the letter which arrived three days ago. I have prepared myself against his coming, however, and will not be unhappy to leave this house, except on one account. My mother must face the brunt of my father's anger when he knows I am gone. He will blame her, and she will be forced to wear her veil again until the proof of his rage has disappeared.'_" Heather looked up from the journal. "The guy was a wife-beater, too? What a _bastard!"_ It was the first time I'd heard an actual swear-word coming from her, but I couldn't really blame her. The more we were learning about Charles Arthur Henderson, the less I liked him, regardless that he'd been dead for over a hundred years.

Heather continued to read. "Here's the next entry, June thirtieth. The day after de Bohun was supposed to meet her and take her away. _'He did not come for me last night. I waited until dawn broke the eastern sky, and then wept until I fell asleep. Mother tried to awaken me at ten o'clock, but I did not hear her. I rose just before noon, but did not go down for the mid-day meal. Mother came to see me, but I could not tell her what troubled me. She assumed it was my menses, and left orders I was not to be disturbed unless I wished it.' _Wow, she really took it hard. She thinks de Bohun jilted her."

"Are there any other entries?" I asked.

"Yes, there's a few more. Here...this one was written about a week after that one. She used to write in her journal almost every day, it appears, but now they're dropping off in frequency. _'Father returned from the City yesterday. He seemed to be in better spirits than he has been of late. I could see Mother was relieved at his good humour, and was determined to be as charming and gay in his company as she could manage. The beef was not cooked to his liking last evening, and Mother was extremely apologetic, yet Father was very gracious and told her not to worry. He did not seem to notice my subdued manner, and only spoke to me of the weather and the horses.'"_

"Why shouldn't he have been in a good mood?" I asked, sourly. "De Bohun was dead, and he probably had something to do with it."

"We don't know that for certain, Mark," Heather reminded me. "It could have been one of those things where he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What's really sad is that Maddie never knew he died the day after he wrote that letter," she continued.

"What's the last entry in her journal say?" I asked, curious.

"Ummmm..." she flipped the pages carefully to the last written entry in the book. "Here's the next to last, dated July twelfth: _'He is not coming. I know this now. Father called me into his study earlier today and informed me he had paid Armand a large sum of money for the purpose of never contacting me again. He said Armand took the money and promised to go to California. I cannot believe he would do such a thing, but Father had written proof, which he produced from his ledger book. My heart is broken. I shall never marry.'_

"And this is the last entry," Heather continued, "written many years later. _"September 30th, 1917. Mother and Father died last month of the grippe. I am alone now. All that I would have taken with me in marriage I have removed to the attic. The workmen have done their jobs well, hoisting the heavier furniture up with block and tackle, and then covering over the windows to remove all traces of the attic from street view. It has been sealed away from my sight, and I shall forget it is there. If there are any who would find it after I am gone, it is theirs to do with as they see fit, for I care no longer.' _So that's how the big stuff was put up there," she mused, quietly.

We were silent for a moment, digesting this. Finally I said, "Well, at least she gives you permission." Heather laughed sadly, once, and nodded, still lost in thought.

"You know," she said, after a moment. "You found those keys in a hidden drawer in that desk upstairs. I wonder if there are any other hidden compartments in it. Maybe her father's ledger book is there, too."

"Not too likely," I pointed out. "That desk was Maddie's. Henderson would have hidden his ledger book in _his_ desk, in his study." We looked at each other for a long moment, both of us thinking the same thing. As one we got up and headed downstairs to take a look. Once again, I had an uneasy feeling entering the room, and I could tell Heather felt it too, as she looked around it when we came in. But although the prickling on the back of my neck didn't go away, nothing happened while we examined the desk. We combed over every inch of it without success.

"Nothing," I said, crawling out from underneath, covered in dirt and dust. "No secret catches or false bottoms or anything."

"And none of the keys on that ring you found fit these drawers," Heather said sourly.

"Well, it's not likely that Maddie would have the keys to her father's desk," I pointed out. "You might have to get that locksmith in here after all."

"What about the fireplace?" she asked. "Sometimes things get hidden behind stones in fireplaces. I see it in the movies all the time."

A feeling of dread washed over me. Oh no, not the chimney! "That only happens in the movies," I said, as dismissively as I could. "Why don't we get something to eat? I don't know about you, but I'm starving." I knew the distraction wouldn't work for long, but I was hoping to buy some time while I tried to figure out a way to keep her away from the chimney.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," she said, rubbing her own rumbling stomach. The distracting thought of rubbing her there myself forced me to give myself a mental shake. _Down, boy!_ I told myself, though at this point I knew these errant thoughts were not my own.

Over lunch we talked about old movies we liked, baseball-she was an avid Cubs fan, I discovered-and her faith. I was curious to learn a bit more about paganism, and Heather had no objections about discussing it.

"Well," she grinned, "if you ask a half-dozen pagans what paganism is all about, you'll get a half-dozen different answers. Paganism is a very personal faith." She paused a moment, as if gathering her thoughts. "As it's practiced today, it's actually a recent evolution based on a much older, nature-based faith. We believe that the Higher Power is both male and female, and since females are the gender that gives birth, we think of Creation as female, since it has produced us, the human race." I nodded in concession.

"Modern pagans are divided into about as many different traditions as you can imagine. Some follow a particular pantheon of gods and goddesses, such as the Norse or Greek, some follow a Dianic tradition, which excludes men."

"Which do you follow?" I asked. Somehow I couldn't see her as an Amazon.

"I'm a solitary practitioner," she said. "I take a little bit from many traditions and blend it into what is most comfortable for me. That's one of the nice things about paganism...there's no 'right way' or 'wrong way' to practice it, unlike some Christian faiths."

"So you don't have a Heaven or Hell?" I asked, curious. "What about your afterlife?"

Heather smiled. "Pagans believe in the 'Summerlands', a place where our souls go to rest until they're re-born."

I nodded. "Reincarnation," I said.

"Yes. We believe that we've lived before, and we'll live again. The souls we've known in past lives often join us in subsequent ones. And each life is a process of perfecting the soul to be closer to Deity."

"Like the Hindus believe about Nirvana," I supplied.

She smiled. "Very similar. Pagans adopt what's best from many different paths." She took a long drink of water before continuing. "We don't have a personification of evil, so we don't believe in Satan or the Devil, or whatever you choose to call him. He's your boy, not ours. Evil, like The Shadow said, lurks in the hearts of men, and we all have to be accountable for our own actions, either in this life, or the next. Karma will getcha," she grinned.

"But the Devil is meant as a caution _against_ men doing evil," I pointed out. "Fear of Hell is what's supposed to keep us in line and doing good. What's to prevent a pagan from doing bad things if you don't have a fear of some kind of retribution?"

"We have the Threefold Law," Heather explained, "and our Pagan Rede, which are pretty much our only laws because unlike the Ten Commandments, we've got it boiled down to two. Simply put, they state, 'If it harms none, do what you will, but that which you do will come back to you threefold.' 'Harming none' means no one, not even yourself."

"And the Threefold Law?"

"That's the part about what you do coming back to you three times as powerful. If I do bad things, worse bad things will happen to me, so why on earth would I do them? On the other hand, if I do good things, more good things will happen to me. Like fixing up the Henderson House and making it available to the community while I live there."

And that brought the conversation back to her house. "What did you want to work on this afternoon?" I asked, still desperately trying to think of a way to keep her alive.

"I should finish up Callie's room," she replied, to my overwhelming relief. "I finished sweeping all the dirt and dust out. I'll have to soak the curtains and see if they'll come clean. The workmanship is too exquisite to just throw them away. If I can save them, I will."

"Always a good idea," I agreed. "What about the walls?" I remembered the peeling paper and chipped paint.

"Oh, I've got a steamer to help take the paper off," she said. "It's out in the carriage house at the moment along with the paint Callie chose. I just didn't think I'd get to it today. It's a bit late in the day to start on a project of that size."

"We could still work on removing the paper from the walls," I pointed out. "Then tomorrow we could sand and prime the walls for painting." Assuming she was still here tomorrow. _Anything_ to keep her away from the chimney!

Heather thought about that. "Yes, I suppose so. I've only got one steamer, though."

"Didn't we pass a rental place on the way here?" I asked. "Let's stop and I'll rent another one." Immediately she tried to veto the idea, but I wouldn't let her. We argued back and forth for a bit, but I got my way in the end and an hour later found us both hard at work, steaming and scraping old wallpaper off the walls of Madeline Henderson's old bedroom.

The rain had stopped over lunchtime, and the afternoon was becoming hot and humid. Stripping off old wallpaper was hot work, and the temperature outside was only a little warmer than it was in the room. By the time we lost the daylight, we had well over half the room done. Heather brought in a work light from the carriage house and we continued working well into the evening until all the walls were finished.

13


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"Whew!" Heather exclaimed, throwing herself into an over-stuffed chair, and being rewarded by a puff of dust. "_That_ was a lot of work! I couldn't have done it all by myself in one day. Thanks again, Mark!" She beamed at the bare walls around her, waiting only for a new coat of paint.

"Glad I could help," I smiled wearily, tying off a plastic bag full of old wallpaper scraps. I reached over and switched off the work light as well, plummeting the room into darkness. The only light came from a street lamp outside the window. "Are you hungry?"

"No," she said. "I'm just tired. I think I'll hit the shower before I turn in for the night." I knew it was my cue to say good-bye and leave, but I was more than a little reluctant to do so. Al's warning that she died tonight-or early tomorrow morning-rang too loudly in my ears. I reached out and took her hand, pulling her up out of the chair.

"Need someone to scrub your back?" I asked before I could stop myself. I wanted to bite out my tongue! Mark's personality seemed to break through when I was most tired.

Heather stiffened. "That won't be necessary..." she began at the same time I tried to apologize. I found myself getting lost in her eyes. Behind her glasses, and in the dimness of the street light, I couldn't tell if they were green or gray or blue, and I liked the guessing game. Before I could stop myself, I pulled her close and kissed her. I could feel her strain to pull away, but only for a heartbeat before she shuddered and melted into me. Her arms crept up around my neck and I couldn't have let her go if I wanted to.

I don't know how long we stood there, locked together, but a chill blew through the room suddenly, and Heather pulled quickly away.

"I think you'd better go, Mark," she said, not looking at me. I followed her eyes but saw nothing there.

"Henderson?" I asked. She nodded and turned to leave the room, heading down the stairs.

"For just a minute," she said as we descended. "Then he was gone. I didn't see him, but I certainly felt him. He wasn't happy. I don't want him to hurt you."

"Hurt _me?_" I blurted out. "Heather, he's not trying to hurt _me_. _You're_ the one in danger!"

"I have protection, Mark," she said, stubbornly, touching her pendant. "But I'd feel awful if anything happened to you."

"What about the attic?" I demanded. "You almost got killed!"

"But I didn't," she countered.

"Only because I was there to catch you," I said, irritated with her seeming willful disregard for her own safety. We were at the front door now, and I never wanted anything less than to leave her in that house alone. It was very dark, as we hadn't left any lights burning on the first floor, and the presence of something malevolent was almost palpable.

"And who do you think brought you there to save me?" she asked calmly. I opened my mouth to argue back but couldn't find anything to say. She was pagan, after all, and steadfastly believed in her Goddess. I wasn't, and knew it was a Higher Power that guided my leaping. Well, that and a really good holographic friend who fed me information from a world-class super-computer, when it wasn't being meddled with by "incorporeal interference."

"We both believe in a Supreme Being, Mark," she continued. "And whether you choose to call that Being 'God', or 'Goddess', it's still the same Power. It's the thing that guides us, brings us comfort, and helps us make sense of the world we live in. If 'God' can do anything, _be_ anything, if 'God' is _in_ all things, what does the name-or the gender-really matter?"

Heather opened the door, cautioning me to be careful of the loose boards on the porch. I wasn't happy about leaving her alone, but I couldn't think of any reason that would allow me to stay. Well, I could think of one reason, but Heather wasn't ready for that yet. Although her kiss certainly suggested otherwise.

A glimmer of light from the study caught my eye. Heather noticed it too.

"Did you leave a light on in there?" I asked.

"No," she said. "There aren't any lights on anywhere. I don't have many lamps yet." She crossed the hall to the open doorway and I followed, fumbling for a flashlight from the hall table as I did so. Heather stopped short and I bumped into her, grabbing her arm to steady her.

Maddie Henderson stood in front of the mantle. She lifted a finger to her lips and pointed to the back of fireplace, then gestured for us to come in. Swallowing hard against a suddenly dry mouth, I eased in front of Heather and entered the room, approaching cautiously. I knew it was silly, but I addressed the apparition anyway.

"Is there something hidden there, Maddie?" I asked quietly. She nodded, pointing again at the back of the fireplace, and again motioning us to be quiet.

"You're afraid your father will hear us?" Heather murmured. Maddie nodded again, sadly, and vanished. I went over to the fireplace where she had been and looked up inside.

"I don't see anything unusual," I said, shining the flashlight around and up inside the flue. Heather came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. Just then I heard the Imaging Chamber door open in the hallway and got up quickly to head Al off before Heather could see him again. "Don't do _anything_, Heather," I warned, setting down the flashlight. "I'll be right back."

"Al," I gritted out in the hallway, as softly as I could, "you'd better have a good reason for showing up right now. This is not a good time to-"

"Sam, what do you think you're doing!" he cried out in alarm. "Don't leave her alone in there! Ziggy says the chimney stones are unstable-" My eyes widened in horror and I rushed back into the room just in time to see Heather standing with the top half of her body up the flue. A scattering of dust and small bits of stone came clattering down from inside, and I lunged for her, pulling her out of the fireplace just as several large stones tumbled down and smashed the place where she had once stood.

We rolled across the hearth and I ended up on top of her. The glare of the flashlight we'd knocked out of our way bathed us in a small pool of yellow light. In her hands, she was clutching a large, flat, metal box. She was covered in dust and soot, but otherwise unharmed.

Fear of what had almost happened made me lose my temper. "You little fool!" I ground out. "Didn't you realize what could happen to you? Don't you know these old chimneys are-" I broke off as I saw the realization dawn in her eyes.

"He-he tried to kill me!" she whispered, her eyes wide with fear. "I looked up the flue and saw the box. I knew I could grab it, and when I did, I felt a c-cold breeze pass me. I thought it was a draft at first, but then I saw the d-debris falling. I couldn't move! I wanted to, but I couldn't! It was like I was paralyzed. And then you pulled me out and-" she shuddered uncontrollably. "You s-saved me, Mark! You saved my life, _again!_"

All my anger and fear for her evaporated. I rolled off her and gathered her close, holding tight. "It's starting to become a habit!" I muttered, and hugged her while she shook with delayed reaction. There were no tears or wracking sobs, just the shaking. A lesser woman would have been reduced to a more emotional display, but Heather, I was learning, was made of sterner stuff. Past her shoulder, I saw Al heave a sigh of relief and give me a thumbs-up before vanishing. "Listen," I said, after several moments, when it seemed she was getting herself under control, "why don't you go upstairs and clean up? I'll take care of this mess here and fix us something to eat." Heather nodded in agreement, for once not arguing with me, and went upstairs. Al reappeared as soon as she was gone.

"That was a close one, Sam!" Al berated me. "How could you let her do that? You knew what was going to happen!"

"Al, I didn't have much choice," I apologized. "I heard you coming in and didn't want Heather to see you again."

"Aw geez, Sam, I'm sorry!" he capitulated. "If I'd known….but Ziggy had a breakthrough and we knew the chimney was going to cave in any moment. I just came to warn you…" he hung his head in remorse.

"It's okay, Al," I assured him. "I pulled her out in time. She's fine, she's just gone upstairs to clean up." Then I told him what had led up to our exploration of the chimney flue. "We saw the spirit of Maddie Henderson. She pointed to the fireplace, and we knew there was something there she wanted us to find." At Al's grimace of skepticism, I filled him in quickly on what we'd learned from Maddie's journal and her letters from de Bohun. I could see he was still not completely convinced, but he was coming around.

"So you think this...this _ghost_ of Maddie _wants_ you to find out the truth," he reasoned aloud, "and her _father_ is the one who wants to keep it hidden?"

"It's all I've got so far, Al. Based on what we _know_, it looks like Henderson told his daughter he'd paid the guy off so she'd think he ditched her for money. She swore she'd never get married, and it looks like she kept that promise."

"Wow," said Al. "You'd think she'd read a paper or something, and see the obituary notice."

"Not necessarily, Al," I reminded him. "This town is about fifty miles or so from Chicago. News didn't travel very quickly back then. If Henderson didn't say anything about the attempted robbery to his family, they might not have known. And if he kept the papers away from them, they'd only have his word about de Bohun's disappearance."

"So what was it that Maddie's spook wanted you to find?" Al asked. For some reason, I didn't much care for the word "spook" regarding Maddie, but I let it slide.

"Heather was hanging onto this when I pulled her out," I said, showing him the metal box. It was covered in rust and scorch marks, and there was a key lock on one side.

"Aren't ya gonna open it?" my holographic companion asked, curiously.

"I think I'll wait for Heather," I said. "She found it." I could see Al was disappointed, but I owed Heather the discovery of the box's contents. She had almost paid for it with her life; and that reminded me of a more pressing concern.

"So what does Ziggy say about later tonight, Al?" I asked wearily.

He consulted the handset and sighed in frustration. "She stills dies tonight in a house fire, Sam, unless you can save her." 

"And then something else will crop up," I muttered morosely.

"No, not this time," Al said, a note of surprise in his voice. "Ziggy says there's a ninety-nine point seven percent chance that if you manage to save Heather from dying tonight, then all the trouble stops, and she's able to finish restoring the house!"

Suddenly I was elated. This was the best news I'd had in a while! "What about her and Mark staying together?" I asked.

My friend sighed, consulted the handset and shook his head. "Still nothin', Sam. He doesn't figure into her future. You must be wrong about that."

"I'm not wrong," I insisted irritably. "Alright, let's leave that for now. Where does Ziggy say the fire starts?"

"Uhhh...dammit, not _now_, you hunkuv electronic junk!" He hit the handset against the palm of his hand again and it squealed in protest. "Ziggy's not sure, Sam. That interference is back again."

We looked at each other and spoke at the same time. "Henderson."

Ziggy had said earlier there was a _'ghost_ in the machine.' Now I had serious suspicions that somehow Henderson himself was interfering. How, I didn't know, and it hardly mattered. I was determined this time to stay the night in Heather's house, even if I had to sleep in a hammock.

Al left with a promise to alert me as soon as he had more to go on, and I quickly and carefully removed the stones from the fireplace and stacked them out of the way. Then I went into the kitchen to clean up and fix something for Heather and me to eat. When she came down fifteen minutes later I had shaken the dust and dirt out of my shirt and left it hanging on a hook by the back door. I heard Heather's swift intake of breath at the sight of my bare, muscled back turned toward her.

"Sorry," I muttered and placed the sandwiches I'd fixed on a plate on the kitchen table and grabbed my shirt, pulling it on and buttoning up the front. "Ah...I found some sandwich fixings in the fridge. I think you're out of milk, though." I shook the empty container and gestured at the two glasses that weren't quite full.

"I'll get some more in the morning," she said quietly, and sat down. We ate in silence for several minutes. Then she spoke. "What was in the box?"

"I don't know," I said. "I thought I'd wait for you to open it."

Her eyes lit up for a moment. "Thank you," she said softly, and resumed eating. After a minute, however, she spoke again, hesitatingly. "I've been thinking, Mark, about what you said earlier."

"I've said a lot of things," I replied carefully. "Which one in particular?"

"About maybe I should just walk away from this." She refused to look at me.

I stopped eating and stared at her. "Seriously?" I asked. I remembered what Al had said, that if she walked away from this house now she'd be miserable and lonely. I couldn't let that happen anymore than I could leap now and let her die.

She didn't look at me. "It's not just me," she said slowly, and it was obvious to me she'd thought it all out. "I have to think of Callie. She's still young enough that she needs me. And if Henderson is that determined to drive _me_ out, what would he do once Callie comes home? Am I strong enough to protect _her_? Would he leave her alone based on the fact she's an innocent child? I can't put her at risk like that."

It twisted me up inside to hear her talk about giving up her dream, even for the sake of her daughter. Heather didn't know what I knew, though. If I could find a way to save her life tonight, she'd be alright. I didn't know yet how that would work out. Maybe Mark would be there after I leaped to keep an eye on her. But I couldn't let her give up now.

"I think it's too soon for you to be talking about giving up," I said slowly. "I know I was speaking from caution earlier today, but I've had time to think about it. And I don't know about you, but I'd be more than a little upset if someone tried to drive me out of my own home."

Heather pushed her plate away and sighed in frustration. "Mark, I can't put Callie in danger! I just can't!" Her voice trembled, and I could see her nerves were strained nearly to the breaking point.

"Then you have to put a stop to Henderson before your daughter comes home," I said firmly.

"The only thing that will stop him is a banishment," she pointed out. "I've only had to do that once before, in a different house. It was a long time ago, and to do it I had to confront the spirit with the truth. I don't know what truth will enough to banish Henderson. That he beat his wife? Deplorable, yes, but not enough. That he claimed to have paid off his daughter's boyfriend when he really died in a shoot-out at the bank? Despicable, yes, but again maybe not enough."

"Then we need to find the truth, Heather," I said reasonably. "And I'm not leaving until we do." I held up my hand to keep her from interrupting. "I'm not leaving you alone in this house. I'll sleep outside your bedroom door to watch over you if I have to, but I'm not leaving, and that's final!" For a moment I saw the stubbornness in her eyes, but suddenly they widened-in hope?-and softened. Her eyes were so expressive; it was like reading her mind. She was daring to hope that I-that _Mark-_could care for her once more.

"You can sleep in Callie's room," was all she said. "It's only a twin bed, and it's pink and white-" her eyes twinkled mischievously for a moment, "-but if you could be comfortable on that, you're welcome to stay. And Mark," she hesitantly put a hand on mine, "thank you."

It only took a short while to make up Callie's bed for me, then we made our way back to the kitchen and turned our attention to the metal box. Heather pulled a pry bar out of a drawer and wedged open the lid, breaking the lock. Inside was a leather-bound ledger book. Heather took it out to look at it more closely, and a piece of yellowed paper fell out onto the floor. I leaned over and picked it up. It was a hand-written cash receipt.

"_To Messrs F. and L. for services rendered," _I read aloud. "The amount is two hundred dollars."

"That was a lot of money back then," Heather commented, turning the pages of the ledger. "Is there a date on it?"

I looked at the piece of paper front and back but there was nothing. "No," I said. An old newspaper clipping clung to the bottom of the box, and I carefully peeled it out. "Here's another news report of the robbery!" I exclaimed. "This one is from a different paper than the on-line archive."

"Really?" Heather leaned over my shoulder to read it. I breathed in her musky perfume, and forgot for a moment all the troubles we'd been through. I wished things could have been different between us. That I'd had the patience back in college to draw Heather out of her shell, that we'd made love as I wanted to do-_no, _that wasn't me! It was Mark coming through again. I knew I was tired, but I couldn't let my guard slip. Mark wouldn't thank me for taking advantage of the woman he was falling in love with.

_But if I let Mark come forward, and I took a back seat..._

I crushed that thought before it could be completed. Now I was starting to rationalize like Al!

"This says the robbers were recognized," Heather was reading the clipping. "It says they were known to the police, but usually were known to be hit men, not bank robbers..." her voice trailed off, then read the names aloud. "Mister Sean Fitzwalter and Mister Michael Logan." She picked up the paper that had fallen on the floor. "Misters F. and L." Her eyes met mine, and they sparkled with excitement. "I think we're on to something, Mark!" She quickly flipped the ledger book to the date of the robbery and murder, tracing her finger down the column. "Look!" She practically danced in place, and the movements were very distracting. "Look, look, look!" Forcibly I turned my eyes to the book and read aloud.

"'_Twenty-second June, 1903. Paid two hundred to F. and L. to eliminate A.D. problem. Wrote receipt from D. to present to M. as proof of infidelity.' _Wait, there's more," I continued. "Look at the notation at the bottom of the page, about two days later: _'Eliminated F. and L. liability.'"_ I looked up at Heather. "What does that sound like to you?"

"It doesn't sound good for Misters F. and L., that's for sure," she grinned wryly. "If I had to guess, I'd say they were supposed to have gotten away, but messed up. Henderson must have had to put out a hit on them to make sure they wouldn't get caught and start talking."

"Either that," I mused, "or they may have come back, asking for more money, and he 'eliminated' them."

"No honor among thieves, for sure," Heather smiled grimly. "Mark, I think this is the final piece of the puzzle. I think this is the proof I need to confront Henderson."

As we stood there in the kitchen, taking in the full weight of what we'd discovered, I heard Al's voice calling from upstairs. "Sam! You'd better get up here quick!"

Heather saw the look in my eyes and as I ran full-tilt out of the kitchen, demanded, "What's wrong? What's happening? Is that _smoke _I smell?"

"Call the fire department!" I bellowed as I rushed upstairs.

"In here, Sam!" I heard Al call. Maddie's room-and we'd left the journal and letters there! I saw a dull orange glow flickering against the wall of the hallway and paused only long enough to duck into the bathroom and soak a towel in water. Dripping, I trailed it after me and entered the bedroom. Al was standing next to the pole lamp which had somehow ignited, and was beginning to spread tongues of flame across the dust-dry carpet. I raised the drenched towel, but Al yelled, "No, Sam! Not the lamp! It's an electrical fire!"

"I know, I know!" I growled. In frustration I beat the carpet around the lamp to keep the fire from spreading. I hoped Heather had called the fire department, but even if they got here, we'd still have to get out and leave it in their hands.

And then suddenly I heard a _whoosh_ and a spray of chemicals hit the lamp and the carpet, dousing them. In a matter of a few moments, the emergency was over, and Heather stood in the doorway, wielding a fire extinguisher like a Valkyrie. I didn't even know she had one! The look on her face was thunderous. "We didn't leave that lamp turned on," was all she said. She saw Al standing just beyond the scorched lamp. For a moment I was afraid she might blame him. Instead, she set the extinguisher down and bowed respectfully.

"You warned Mark, didn't you, Al?" she asked. Al nodded, knowing she couldn't hear him even if he answered. "Thank you," she said gratefully. "If I could touch you, I'd kiss you for that!"

"If I could feel it, I'd accept it, sweet lady," Al said fervently. Heather couldn't hear him, but she smiled anyway. In a moment, however, her dark look returned. "This has gone far enough," she muttered. "It's time to do something about this." She left the room.

"What are you going to do?" I called after her.

"Something I should have done when I first moved in," she called back. "But I didn't have the proof until now!"

"Thanks, Al," I said to my friend, then did a double-take at his clothing. "Dress whites?" I whistled softly. "What's the occasion? And why haven't I leaped? I thought you said if Heather survived the fire she'd be safe?"

"Yes, Sam, she's safe," he said, a bit wistfully, looking out the door after Heather. "And you haven't leaped yet because you've got to be there when she does what she's going to do next," Al replied.

"What's that?" I demanded.

Al took a long drag on his cigar. "She's going to confront Henderson's spirit," he said calmly, "and you need to be there. Don't worry, I'll be there, too." He gestured at his uniform. "There's a reason I'm dressed like this. I did a little more research and found out Henderson was a Navy officer before he retired and went into the investment banking business. He's about to stand trial for the crime of murder. I am here as an official representative of the United States Navy." The Imaging Chamber door opened, and Al stepped through. "See you in a few, buddy."

It was nearly midnight when Heather had everything set up in the study. We'd moved some of the furniture out of the way against the walls, and Heather had traced a circle of salt large enough for the two of us to stand in comfortably and still have room to move around.

At the four cardinal points of the compass, Heather lit small candles in votive cups and then ignited incense in a small censer. Inside the circle with us were a small bowl of earth, another of water, and the proof Heather needed to confront the spirit of Charles Arthur Henderson-the letters from de Bohun, the journal belonging to Maddie, and Henderson's own ledger book with its receipts and clippings. She cautioned me to stay within the circle of salt.

When everything was ready, Heather took a deep breath. "Alright, then. It's midnight. Let's begin."

"What do you want me to do?" I asked, still feeling silly, but knowing after all we'd been through that this was something she needed to do.

"Just be moral support," she answered. "At a certain point I'll take your hand. Don't let go for anything."

_Never, _came the thought from Mark. _Not for the rest of our lives._ I didn't attempt to suppress it.

Heather began her ritual, consecrating her circle and setting up her protective space. She called upon her Goddess and her God and the four elements to witness what would happen here this night. She called upon her Spirit Guide to help her. I saw nothing, but felt a maternal presence, and Heather bowed reverently to the unseen spirit with a simple, "Grandma."

I heard the Imaging Chamber door open, and Al appeared outside the circle. He stood calmly by at attention, and watched, but didn't say a thing. Heather acknowledged him with a respectful nod. "Admiral," was all she said, noting his rank. He nodded back formally and set himself at ease. She then turned to face north, with the fireplace in front of her. She took my hand, and I held onto it firmly.

"I call upon the spirit of Madeline Alice Henderson," Heather said clearly. "I ask you to come forth and show yourself, please." A moment later a shimmering appeared next to the fireplace, and the figure of Maddie Henderson solidified. "Thank you for coming, Maddie," Heather said, and bowed. The figure of Maddie smiled-if a bit sadly-and curtseyed.

"I call upon the spirit of Charles Arthur Henderson," Heather said, more forcefully this time. "I _command_ you to come forth and show yourself!" There was no pleading in her voice this time. I could feel the prickling on the back of my neck, and Heather's grip on my hand tightened slightly.

"I call upon you again, Charles Arthur Henderson," Heather called out. "I command you to show yourself!" I could feel anger swirling around the circle, but unable to come through. Al's eyes almost popped out of his head, and I wondered what he must be seeing. The figure of Maddie was dimming in a dark cloud that began to fill the room. I could still see Al, and wondered if it was because he was a hologram linked to my synapses, and not a spirit in _this_ sense of the word.

"For the third time, I call upon you, Charles Arthur Henderson," Heather's voice rang out. "In the name of the God and the Goddess, you cannot disobey! Show yourself!" Was it my imagination, or was Heather's pendant glowing with white light? I felt a surge of energy running through me, into and through my hand that was holding Heather's.

"_NO, NO, NOOOOO!"_ an angry voice howled. Al ducked as something _whooshed_ by him. It was purely reflex, of course. He was a hologram after all, and unaffected by anything here. Part of my mind registered the fact that for the first time, I could actually _hear_ the hateful spirit that haunted this house.

The darkness solidified by the fireplace, and the figure I'd seen before took shape and revealed itself in the form of Charles Arthur Henderson. He glared at Heather and I with murderous intent, but she stared coolly back at him, unafraid. And she wasn't finished yet; I could feel the power flowing from me into her, and knew she was calling upon my strength to help her do what needed to be done. I relaxed and let her take it.

"We are not all here," she said, barely giving Henderson notice. "I now call upon the spirit of Armand de Bohun. Please come forth and show yourself!"

Henderson howled in rage, but his daughter Maddie's face was the picture of joy. After a long moment, the figure of Armand de Bohun glimmered next to Maddie.

Wasting no time, Heather confronted Henderson. "Charles Arthur Henderson, you are bound to this house by the actions you took in life. Those actions deprived your only daughter of the happiness she would have had in _her_ life, thereby binding her to this house as well. You hid your secret from your daughter and the world, and carried it with you to your grave."

Standing as far from her father as she could, Maddie's face revealed nothing but contempt for him. She refused to even look at the spirit who had in life been her father.

"Because of this," Heather went on, "you have been unable to move on to the next stage of your existence. In addition, you have delayed the punishment and the justice which you have earned." It was a darn good thing looks couldn't kill, or Heather might have dropped then and there from Henderson's scowl.

Why Henderson didn't interrupt her, I never really understood. He seemed to have been the kind of man that would never have permitted a woman to chastise him when he lived. Whether it was the power of the binding and banishment Heather was casting, the presence of the souls he'd wronged, or the will of the Almighty Him-or _Her_self, Henderson stood on the other side of the salt line, exuding his hatred of Heather in stony silence.

Heather stooped and picked up the ledger book with her free hand, never letting go of mine with the other. "This book contains notations written in your hand that prove you contracted to have Armand de Bohun murdered by hired assailants under the premise of a staged robbery attempt at your bank."

At the other end of the fireplace, de Bohun glared at Henderson and nodded. "You knew de Bohun, being the gentleman he was, would try to protect the patrons of the bank," Heather continued. "You gave the robbers his description and made sure he was the only fatality. Is that not true?"

Henderson looked daggers at her, but nodded shortly. _"Yes,"_ he snapped.

"In addition," Heather continued, "you forged a receipt of money, ostensibly received by Armand de Bohun, and presented it to your daughter Maddie with the falsehood that he accepted money in return for leaving your daughter alone. Is that not also true?"

Again, Henderson appeared to struggle against the accusations, but whatever spell Heather had done, he was forced to acknowledge the truth, and again nodded curtly. _"Yes,"_ he growled, but with less emphasis than before.

I knew it wasn't my imagination anymore. Heather's pendant _was_ glowing, and the energy coursing through us was what protected us against Henderson's darkness, broke down his defenses, and forced him to admit the truth.

"And finally, during your lifetime," Heather pressed on, "you kept the knowledge of the robbery attempt and your complicity in it from your daughter, allowing her to believe that the man she loved...and who loved her in return...had jilted her. A man who truly loved her for herself, and not-as you believed-for her inheritance. Is this not also true, Charles Arthur Henderson?"

Henderson raged against it, but he was weakening, and finally nodded. _"Yes,"_ he snarled, but it came out as an ineffectual whisper. Now Maddie faced her father, but loathing had replaced contempt.

Heather seemed satisfied, but I wasn't. "That wasn't bad enough," I said, "but you tried to drive Heather out of this house. You made those floorboards give way underneath her in the attic. You made the chimney stones fall, and you sparked the fire upstairs, didn't you?"

Defeated, Henderson could only nod. Behind me Al spoke up. "You even beat your wife when anything upset you," he stated with disgust. "Maddie wrote about it in her journal. It's why she was afraid to leave after you murdered de Bohun. Only a _weak_ man hits a woman, you nozzle!" Henderson cringed against the accusation, but the fight was out of him now.

"I have a daughter coming home soon," Heather continued. "And I will not allow you to frighten her or cause any harm to her. I was willing to let you stay, as long as you behaved, but you just couldn't let it go. You were such a control-freak in life, and nothing has changed in your after-life. I have no choice but to banish you from this home."

Maddie stepped forward at that point with an outstretched hand. _"Please-no-"_ As much as she hated her father, it appeared that Maddie still cared enough, or wanted to show enough mercy, to keep him out of the fires of Hell, but Heather was firm.

"I'm sorry, Maddie. Your father did a great wrong during his lifetime, and he has to face the consequences of those actions. Not from me, but from a Higher Power." Maddie bowed her head sadly and returned to de Bohun's side. He put his arm around her shoulders comfortingly.

Heather's voice rose in command again, and the energy surged through both of us. "You built this house over a hundred years ago, Charles Arthur Henderson, but you died in 1917. You are no longer of _this_ world, and this is no longer _your_ house. It's _mine_! And since you can't be nice, you must be _gone_!"

Henderson rallied enough to howl, _"NO!"_ again, but Heather insisted, _"Be gone! Be gone!"_ By the third time she said it, Henderson had faded away to face whatever Karmic justice awaited him. Heather turned to face me, and I could see tears in her eyes. "I really didn't want to do that," she whispered, and I took her in my arms and held her close. But in a moment she straightened and turned to face Maddie Henderson and Armand de Bohun.

"I'm sorry, Maddie," she said quietly. Maddie simply smiled, and spoke quietly. _"Thank you for discovering the truth," _was all she said, then leaned in close to de Bohun. _"Merci, ma grand-nièce merveillieux,"_ he beamed gratefully at Heather. Together, they faded away.

I peered at Heather in the candlelight, "So how come we can hear them now, when we couldn't before?"

"We're in sacred space," Heather said, as if that explained it. "We're technically in a space between the worlds, so it's possible."

"Waitaminit! You mean you can hear _me_ now?" Al spoke directly to Heather.

"Yes, Al," Heather smiled. "I can hear you now, but only until I open the circle." She paused for a beat, then lifted an eyebrow and grinned. "_'Nozzle'_?" she queried. Al grinned back sheepishly and shrugged before straightening and bowing formally to Heather.

"Well, then, let me tell you right now, before it's too late," he pleaded. "I've never heard anyone sing like you do. Promise me you'll at least cut one record?"

Heather chuckled, but it was subdued. "I think my folks would like that, too, Al. They've never really had a chance to hear me sing. I promise I'll try to find a way to do that."

"Good enough," Al said. "Sa-uh, Mark, I'll catch you later!" and he stepped through the Imaging Chamber door and vanished. Heather smiled again, then took a deep breath and thanked the Powers that aided her, and opened the circle. She gathered everything up and went upstairs to put things away.

Al poked his head back in. "Is she still here?" he asked, looking around.

"No," I said, "she's gone upstairs. Al, it's really over now, isn't it?"

"Yep. You did good, pal," he grinned, lighting up another cigar.

"No more ghosts in the machine?" I inquired.

Al shook his head. "Nope. Ziggy says everything is working A-OK now."

"So what happens now?"

Al took out Ziggy's handset and punched a few buttons before answering. "Heather goes on to restore the house to its former grandeur and it becomes a showpiece in the town. She even hosts charity events here to raise money for the local battered women's shelter."

"That's it?"

"No, uh...she locates the body of Armand de Bohun, and as a blood-relative she's able to claim it and has him exhumed and laid to rest in the local cemetery next to Maddie Henderson."

"What about her and Mark?" I demanded. "And her promise to you to make that record?"

Al looked disappointed. "It doesn't happen, Sam. She never gets up the courage to try. Without Mark in her life, she just never gets the confidence she needed to go for it." He paused a moment and looked up at the ceiling, as if seeing through the wood and plaster to Heather's room above. "I think you need to prove to her that Mark loves her. She's not going to initiate anything because she still isn't sure of him."

"_I_ need to prove to her that Mark loves her?" I repeated, parrot-like. 

"That's what Ziggy says, Sam," Al confirmed. I stepped to the hallway and looked up the stairs. Heather hadn't returned yet. I put a hand on the stair banister and cocked an eyebrow at Al.

"You're sure?"

"Go ahead, Sam," Al said softly. "She's waiting for you to make the next move."

I climbed the stairs slowly, like a man in a dream. Mark's presence in my mind was becoming more and more dominant with each step. I paused outside the door of Heather's room, but it opened before I could tap gently. Heather looked sad, tired and a little anxious.

"I heard you talking, before I heard you coming up," she said simply. "Al?" I nodded, breathing in her musky perfume. For some reason, the scent of it always seemed to provoke a physical reaction from me, and right now I didn't care.

_I want to kiss her, _I thought. Or was that Mark? Did it matter now? Heather opened her mouth to say something, but I didn't give her a chance. I kissed her, long and slow and deep. She melted for a moment, then stiffened and pulled away.

"I can't let you do this, Mark," she breathed. "I'm not strong enough."

"Not strong enough?" I exclaimed in disbelief. "You're single-handed tackling a monumental restoration project, you uncovered a hundred-year-old murder mystery, and you've just banished a malevolent spirit from your house! You're the most amazing woman I've ever met!" Stronger and stronger, I could feel Mark returning. I didn't know if the words were coming from me or him, and it hardly mattered.

"I can't let you break my heart again, Mark," she whispered, refusing to look at me. "I'm not strong enough to go through that again. These past twenty years I tried to move on without you, getting married to a good man I didn't deserve, having a child with him. And I made it work. I was a good wife to Terry. We had a good marriage, and he never regretted a day of our lives together." I heard the tremor in her voice and knew she was very close to the breaking point.

"But deep down, in the most secret part of my heart, I never forgot you." She finally raised her head to look at me. "I could never give Terry all of my heart, because a part of it was always with _you_. I never stopped loving _you_."

She took a deep, steadying breath. "But I'm not an innocent teen-ager anymore, Mark, and I have Callie to think about. And I want more-no, I _deserve_ more than an on-again, off-again relationship, whether it's with you or anyone else. So I can't let you break my heart again."

I smiled. _We_ smiled, Mark and I. "I don't want to break your heart, Heather," we said softly, pulling her closer. "I want to hold it safe forever. I want to help you re-build this dream home of yours and be a good step-father to Callie, if you'll both let me. I want to go to sleep each night with you beside me, and wake up each morning, knowing you'll always be there." We paused a moment, then smiled and said the words we both knew he'd never said to her before. "I love you, Heather."

I felt the blue glow surround me as I leaped out of Mark and let him take it from there.

Downstairs in the study, Admiral Albert Calavicci grinned as he studied the handset. He punched a few buttons, and closed his eyes in contented bliss as the handset played a recording of Mark and Heather Simmons- singing _"I'm Afraid This Must Be Love"._

_"(Mark) So let's hear those violins,_

_ Let the world break out in silly grins,_

_ (Heather) Then let's fly to the stars up above..._

_ 'Cause when all is said and done,_

_ (Mark) I know you're the only one,_

_ (Both) And I'm afraid this must be love!"_

"This is my favorite song of theirs," he smiled as the music outro played on, and exited the Imaging Chamber to await Sam's next leap.

15


End file.
